


Dust Ballet

by Grandoverlord



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Characters w/ Anxiety, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Meister!Asahi, SoulEater AU, Weapon!Noya, oh and there's cursing, the daisuga is more implied tbh but it's there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-03-07 04:28:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 32,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3161255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grandoverlord/pseuds/Grandoverlord
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Asahi Azumane isn't defunct. He's not a bad meister --not even a bad person, unless you wake him up early on a weekend. But for some godforsaken reason he's halfway through second year and still doesn't have a partner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. All of the Above

Asahi Azumane was:

           A: Panicking         

           B: Probably going to fail

           C: Partnerless

           D: All of the above

Asahi tapped the pencil against the paper, willing the answers to just appear in the blank spaces, for the notes to take themselves. He was too distracted to study well today.      

It was entirely possible that people could pass in and out of Death Academy without finding a partner. It was entirely possible that he was just one of those people who weren’t really compatible with anyone, and that no amount of studying could secure him that perfect fit. After all, it had been two years- what chance did he have when the rest of the Meisters in his grade had been matched up since the beginning?

It wasn’t like he was bad at what he did. Naturally athletic, he had the strength and stamina to be better than average.

He could be a bit hesitant, he supposed, but once a fight started that all drained away. That was the whole reason he was here; there was nothing like that adrenaline hit from a fight. There was just something _else_ about how he could feel his inhibitions fall away—it was visible, like a tree shedding its leaves.  

Asahi just wanted someone who’d feel that with him. What was the term they used? Soul resonance? He couldn’t imagine it. Friends liked him enough, but being partners with someone was a different level of whatever that closeness was. It was more than friendship, maybe even more than love. The utter and complete trust the weapon gave the Meister and vice versa was overwhelming. Terrifying.

Not that he’d know.

Groaning, the second year buried his hands in his hair. Jailbroken strands hung loose around his face. All these terms on the paper in front of him…he understood them, technically. Each one he could scrawl the definition for and recite if he was called on to do it in class. That made no difference in the end, though.

It didn’t make _sense_. He knew everything he ought to know. According to his teachers, he’d already nailed the basic moves of most Weapons, some of the advanced moves of the more common ones. It wasn’t that he lacked skill, or intelligence, or even experience. It was just that _something_ that seemed to slip through his fingers like water whenever he thought he was close to getting a hold on it. Whatever it was, he certainly wouldn’t be able to find it in this goddamn book- that was for sure.

He’d had this pity party before. At the beginning, middle, and end of every year there was a compatibility exam. The first time he’d sat in on it as a second year the looks had been less scared and more pitying. Even they knew how sad it’d be for him to reach third year without a partner.

As he’d gotten older he’d noticed more and more stares when he went to take it. People muttered about him having already passed graduating age, how he beat up unsuspecting Meisters when their weapons weren’t around, and other equally unfounded rumors that seemed to follow him wherever he went.

Was it possible to graduate and become a Meister without a weapon? Surely there were weapons that never found matches. There had to be.  Maybe he could partner with one of them—it wouldn’t be perfect, but even if the puzzle pieces didn’t quite fit together he was sure they could still get an idea of what the picture was. A patched coat was better than freezing, right?

He’d rather quit than do that, if he was being honest with himself. It was the looming alternative that stared him down like a growing wall every exam. Asahi wanted to bang his head against a wall. Or a desk. Or any solid surface, really, as if he could knock the compatibility into himself.

He felt the familiar tightening in his chest that told him that he either had to calm down or shit would hit the fan. Sometimes it was frustration that clawed at his lungs and kept him from thinking straight, but right now it was cold bolts of panic, shooting straight through his core. A shudder ran down his spine as he picked a point to stare at. In, out.    

Whatever this was, he’d learned to take care of it for the most part in the last year. The first time it had happened was right after he’d gotten the results for his last exam of first year, a blatant red ‘x’ instead of percentages. Sugawara had been around, and he’d tried to help. Mostly he’d just taught Asahi not to do it in public.

Trial and error had given him his strategies now. As far as his friends knew, it had been a one time, stress induced bout.

He was lucky he didn’t have a roommate.

As his pulse slowly calmed to a steadier beat, he realized what he had been looking at. Pushing down any lingering feelings of anxiety to somewhere deep under his chest, he blinked as he took in the scene in front of him.

Daichi and Sugawara were studying together. That wasn’t surprisingly by any measure. They were compatible in every way, according to the tests. Even though Sugawara wasn’t always the best weapon, and Daichi wasn’t the strongest Meister around, the two of them were incredible together.

When they fought, Sugawara’s blades seemed to rush like water around his wielder. Daichi’s movements were a kind of liquid too; he moved like molten metal, Asahi had always thought. He moved slowly and confidently, like he had all the time in the world to get to his next position but never managing to get there too late. Daichi and Sugawara fought on their own terms. Their resonance scores were some of the highest in the year.

They were also his best friends. They had come into the academy together and did basic training in the same class. Daichi and Sugawara had insisted on getting the same period as him for core classes this year, but he could feel them drifting away from them. There was something to be envied in the looks that they gave each other, knowing and often playful. He always wondered what they were talking about in those silent exchanges. Wonder if they were talking about him.

They had gone down the right course- the course that they were supposed to take. Although they hadn’t been paired right away due to some oversight of the system, they were together by midway through first year and had been inseparable ever since.

Asahi was jealous. Unspeakably so. The longer he went without finding his match, the more and more he resented the fact that it had been so easy for them. They just drifted together with the natural gravity of well matched magnets. And they were so _happy._

His fists tightened on the table.

They were his friends. He ought to be happy for them.

Yet when he saw Daichi whisper something in Sugawara’s ear, saw the other collapse into a fit of barely contained giggles on the desk, he knew that he couldn’t right now. The shot of fear that he had pushed away from himself resurfaced. His Pandora’s box was getting worse and worse at keeping its charge inside. Once the lock had been broken for the first time it had just gotten harder to fix. These days he felt like he was using thread to tie it closed, letting loose at the first shard breaking off of his glass heart.

Asahi was more than six feet tall. He was muscular, like all Meisters had to be. But sitting in the library, whose ceilings were suddenly far too tall, whose labyrinth of bookshelves threatened to close in and cut him off from the air rattling through his throat, whose hushed whispers scraped his ears like knives, he felt fragile. The tightening, coiling feeling in his stomach began to rise and he could taste bile. Somehow, though, he couldn’t drag his eyes away from Sugawara. Laughing.

His hands unclenched and he didn’t both to register the crescent indents left on his palm as he pushed away from the table rather abruptly. Even now he was louder than he meant to be, drawing concerned stares from other inhabitants of the library.

Sugawara was still shaking off the last of his laughter.

Daichi smiled, an open, toothy affair.

He’d never make someone smile like that. He supposed it was about time he faced it, he thought as he speed walked out of the library. Every muscle in him screamed at him to _run_ , to push himself until there was nowhere left to go and he could fold into himself.

Why didn’t anyone want him? Why didn’t any of the weapons need him like Sugawara needed Daichi? Why was he so goddamn useless that he couldn’t even see his friends having fun together-- like they deserved to-- without tasting bitter envy?

Words like arsenic bubbled through his veins, fighting to the surface in an attempt to be seen, to be heard. They crossed over themselves in his mind and yet he could hear each one like it was the only thing piercing the silence. Each one was another needle into his heart, this one into his stomach, the next into his lungs. How could fear hurt like this?

Maybe this was why he didn’t have a partner. Maybe he had stood a chance before _this_ had started to happen to him, but he was just too broken now to do any good. What would happen if this happened in a test, let alone in the field? He’d let his partner down and they’d both probably die. He shouldn’t have been allowed into this school in the first place-- he was so useless, wanted to run, to be running and running and now the static walls that crowded his ears were getting louder, he couldn’t hear his ragged breaths just knew that since he hadn’t black out he was still alive somehow-

“Hey, man, you alright? You look kind of swampy. Green.”

Asahi stilled, feeling a firm grip on his arm. It took a second for him to realize that he had stopped moving, that his hands were braced on his knees and his chest was heaving. Even though his pulse was still racing and he still felt like he was spiraling away above an infinite space, his eyes were focused on the boy in front of him. There was none of the shakiness or disquiet in his gaze looking at this person- this person who looked tall enough to be a child and yet Asahi somehow knew wasn’t one.

Heart in his throat, the second year blinked slowly, having trouble processing the person in front of him. Black hair. Spiked up. Short, shorter than anyone he knew. Brown eyes and upturned eyebrows. Why was he concerned? Oh, right. Asahi probably looked like hell. Swampy.  

There sweat crawled under his school uniform and down his back. A plethora of hair escaped his bun and hovered in a half curled halo framing his face, some of it plastered to his skin. A harsh breath rushed out of Asahi’s lungs far too quickly.

The other was the opposite. His hair was slicked into artificial- looking spikes and his uniform was tossed on haphazardly, but it all looked purposeful. A question stood in the set of his lips.  

Asahi swallowed, forcing himself to choke down more air. “Fine,” he said. Or at least he tried to; he figured a monosyllabic answer was the least dangerous, but even that quivered as another shiver ran through his body, dragging icy fingertips down his back. He was going to puke.

“Huh,” the other dragged out the word and pursed his lips, like he was assessing the taller of the two. Couldn’t he tell that he wasn’t helping? The only reason that Asahi hadn’t run off by down was the lingering remains of self restraint and feeling like a deer in the headlights. Something felt familiar about this kid, but Asahi couldn’t focus on what it was and pinpoint it. Instead, he shook off the hand on his arm and made a show of brushing off his slacks. “You don’t look so fine to me.”

“ ‘m okay, really.”

“Right, because okay people hyperventilate in the old science wing,” the short one shot back. There was no aggressiveness in his voice, just a matter-of-fact confidence that Asahi would have wondered at, normally.

This wasn’t normally.

Asahi hadn’t noticed where he was, but looking around now he could tell that he’d gone farther than he thought.”My dorms are this way,” he muttered. “Excuse me.” He tried to push past, but for his height the other was surprisingly obstinate.

“I’ve got a map here that says they aren’t. Come on, what’cha running from?” The short one held a crumpled map in his hand, true to his word.

Asahi babbled. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Maybe your map’s wrong, I mean I know where my dorm is- I think I know where it is. I have to- I have to go. Pleaseletmego.”

“Where are you roomed? I’m Nishinoya Yuu.”

What was this kid doing, introducing himself? Couldn’t he see that the last thing that Asahi wanted to do right now was interact with him? His heart was an animal clawing at its carcass cage. Talking was making it worse. Everything was making this worse.

“Where’s your partner?” Nishinoya asked. Asahi froze. “It’s pretty irresponsible of them to leave you like this when you’re obviously having some sort of panic attack. No offense, but whoever it is, they’re a pretty shit person.”

It was a normal question, a normal expectation that someone like him would already have a partner to care for and about them. Not so for Azumane Asahi, who would probably never find someone because who would want to look after a wreck like him? No partner deserved to have to stick with him through this. Maybe it was for the best that he never got matched. The ultimatum hung above him and pressed down on his shoulders hard enough that his legs weren’t enough to keep him upright.

“Dude—“ Nishinoya started.

Breath coming in shallow gasps, Asahi stumbled over to the wall. He slid down until he was seated against it, arms wrapped around each other like he was trying to hold himself together. Here he was, breaking down in front of a total stranger and the shame of it made it worse. Part of him wanted to cry, but the other half knew that tears never came when he was like this.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Nishinoya hissed out under his breath. If Asahi had been looking up, he would have seen the look of momentary panic and annoyance cross the other’s face. Not directed at Asahi, but at himself. “I said something. Fuck, I’m just making this worse. _Fuck_.”

“Please go away.” A wind blew through one of the open windows and a crow took off. The hallway was cold and empty, devoid of students and teachers alike. Just a mismatched pair, both looking at different spots on the ground.

Dust particles drifted through the air, illuminated by a single shaft of sunlight haunting the ground next to Nishinoya. He moved through it as he squatted to get to a better level, disturbing the traffic of an infinitesimal highway.

“I’m not gonna leave you here like this,” he muttered, moving so that he was next to Asahi, leaning against the same wall, breathing in the same dust. “So if you want to talk, I’m all ears. If you’re not feeling that, just breathe, okay? Focus on breathing.”

Asahi took a shuddering breath, knowing that it wasn’t enough. His lungs were still going to scream for air and the feeling of pressing wasn’t going to go away. What if it never went away?

Slowly, like he was approaching an easily startled animal, Nishinoya leaned against Asahi. Not enough to move him, to press on him harder than the air already seemed to be, but enough to let him know that he was there.

He didn’t understand why, but breathing was easier when there were two of them. Asahi’s chest rose and fell quickly, but it was beginning to slow. He could swallow without feeling the roadblock in his throat. He wouldn’t feel right for another couple of hours, maybe even a day, he knew. The ridiculously illogical feeling of being so small in a vast nothingness would linger for a while and make him jumpy, more nervous than usual.

Neither of them was sure how long they sat there in silence. Nishinoya didn’t say a thing, didn’t move at all. Asahi counted his breaths and felt his weight against his side as some sort of anchor. It didn’t make sense, why this stranger was able to help at all. If anything having someone else there should have been sending him deeper, but instead it felt like someone had offered a hand and pulled him up. They weren’t even talking.

After a while, Asahi trusted himself to talk. He didn’t shift, just stared straight ahead at the dust mites doing their antigravity dance.

“Who are you?” He asked. If Nishinoya was surprised, he didn’t show it. In fact, he didn’t reply at all. The moment stretched out into an uncomfortably long silence. Maybe Asahi had mistaken him- he hadn’t seemed like the quiet type. “I mean, I haven’t seen you around here before.”

Silence greeted him.

“Thanks, I guess. I’m not really sure what you did but I guess it kind of helped and I feel- I feel a lot better now.”

He swore he could hear an overture coming from the dust, it was so quiet. Asahi had to hold in a chuckle when he saw why. Nishinoya’s mouth hung open slightly and his nose whistled as he breathed in and out evenly- of course he’d fallen asleep. A rush of gratitude flooded through the taller. Maybe he hadn’t meant to have fallen asleep, but it gave Asahi an easy out. Whoever this kid was, he’d thank him next time he saw him. The school wasn’t that big; they’d see each other around some time and he’d be more composed then.

In the mean time, he had to get back to his room. Screw studying-- he was tired. Nishinoya had called it a panic attack. That felt right, somehow. His body felt heavy like he had just done a two hour training block, fighting off a string of enemies. Just in this case his enemy had been himself. The feelings were still there, but for some reason they didn’t seem as urgent right now.

Asahi repositioned Nishinoya so that he was leaned flat against the wall, not falling to either side. It was only fair to let the guy sleep. A gentle smile came to Nishinoya’s lips as Asahi drifted away, and he cracked open an eye.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! As always, I appreciate kudos and comments, especially if you guys have ideas about this because as of yet it's probably going to be a two-shot. Expect the next chapter to be around 5k probably? Hopefully? I love SoulEater AUs so much. so much.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nishinoya Yuu makes living between the lines harder than it should be.

The funny thing about feeling like the world was ending was that it never did. Every time he thought that he’d never take another breath, get smothered by the onslaught of thoughts that plagued him more frequently than he would admit, his lungs filled with air again. The world didn’t seem to give two shits about him—and that was almost kind of comforting. The world not revolving around him just took off some of the stress.

He’d never wanted to be the center of any universe. Imagine the pull of all of those stars and planets, always tugging on him- Asahi didn’t have the force to overcome that. He preferred to drift through negative space, to live between the lines.

And Nishinoya Yuu was making that extremely difficult.

It had been a week since the library scene had gone down. Nobody had talked about it, nor brought up the fact that he had been seen by at least two professors on his cross school dash. Daichi and Suga hadn’t even noticed, apparently. That, or they were just too polite to say anything. Either one was equally possible knowing his classmates. Bluntness was never any of their specialties. Both of them could be bruising when they felt like it, but only when they were joking. Serious topics tended to be, well, ignored.

Those two orbited around each other, Asahi swore. They had lives outside of it just like other planets had moons. Daichi and Sugawara were caught up in an infinite cosmic figure-eight, circling- dancing, really- around and around without end. Asahi was convinced that they had been made from the same star. They both seemed to glow around each other, after all. It only made sense that it was because of their chemical make ups.

There were a lot of times he felt like he was watching from the backseat, like a child strapped down to gaze out the window. He’d been exiled to the figurative kids’ table in their conversation. He didn’t mind taking the observational role, most of the time. Their conversations had always mainly been those two bantering back and forth with Asahi offering the occasional thought, protest, or interjection. Mostly just laughing, though.

For some reason things weren’t as funny anymore. There was always a conspiring tone in their jokes, like there was something more that they were getting at. They must have had some mind meld shit going on- that was the only logical conclusion, obviously. Sometimes weapons were able to communicate telepathically when they were transformed. As Asahi sat across from Sugawara at the lunch table, thoughtfully chewing on something that had probably once been a vegetable, he wondered if that hadn’t extended to his human form, too.

“You know, I will never understand why a redblooded omnivore would purposefully become a vegetarian,” Nishinoya remarked, plopping himself down next to Asahi with as little ceremony as the action would allow. The shorter of the two shot him a wicked grin and he couldn’t help return it, even if his was less mischievous and more apologetic. “ ‘ts not natural.”

“Sorry,” Asahi said. He scooted to the side to give the newcomer more space. This was what he’d meant. Nishinoya Yuu was working his way into his life, and that goddamn star was lighting up the corners of space that he liked to live in. Alone.

Asahi had always been a quiet guy. Always a little bit more reclusive than his friends would have liked. However, before meeting this little sunspot of energy, he’d never really appreciated the words ‘me time’.

You’d think that not having a roommate would afford him some kind of privacy. He was one of the chosen few, he thought, not to have to suffer than ideal. You’d think that having a full lunch table would stop someone from sitting at it. You’d think that him not doing any after school activities or extracurricular would mean that he had plenty of time to yourself. You’d think.

_Ha._

He’d never met someone with as much unrestrained energy as this kid. Turned out that he was a first year, making him officially the youngest person at this school to ever voluntarily talk to him. He acted like one, too. All that bright eyed wonder at the world, it was like he’d popped out of his happy cell long enough to try to happy everyone else up before he went back in. Seriously, it was like the kid had just appeared out of nowhere. Not that Asahi paid a lot of attention to the underclassmen, but he thought he’d recognize someone as…distinct as Nishinoya.

Making himself at home didn’t seem to be a problem that the kid had. After his episode in the hallway, somehow that didn’t surprise Asahi.

Nishinoya shifted lackadaisically through the lunch piled on his Styrofoam tray. It was the normal meal ticket around here: vaguely flavorless, (hopefully) lifeless meat drowned in even more flavorless gravy, vegetables of some sort, and a dessert. That bit was probably the only easily edible portion of the meal- which meant that Noya went for it immediately.

In between scoops of pudding- though it would be more appropriate to call them shovels, because this kid ate like he was a dead man walking- he started talking. Asahi noted that at least he bothered to swallow before opening his mouth. Manners were manners, he thought approvingly.

“So like, what’s the deal with the exam coming up?”

Asahi choked on his (probably) lettuce. Before he could stop himself, he was gawking. Across from him, neither Daichi or Sugawara were, which meant they knew something he didn’t. What the hell?  
Those idiots probably had telepathy and weren’t telling him about it. Maybe they could read his mind. That’d be weird. Unlikely though. And his mouth was still open. Cringing slightly he closed it and tried to regard the confused looking Nishinoya with a less baffled expression.

“What do you mean by what’s the deal? Do you need clarification on what’s expected of you or something?” Asahi asked, his voice coming closer to an even tone than he could have mustered before. “I mean, you’ve taken it before, right? So you ought to just do the same thing again.”

Nishinoya’s eyebrows furrowed and Daichi picked at his food, obviously holding in a laugh. Suga shot him a faux-annoyed look and then redirected a softer one at Asahi.

“He’s a transfer, Asahi. Didn’t he tell you?” There was nothing meant to be offensive in the question, but Asahi could feel himself taken aback at it. He thought that he and Nishinoya were pretty close for having only known each other for a week and a half. That kind of thing tended to come up, you know, pretty quickly.

At least it cleared up why he hadn’t seen the guy around. He was short as hell, enough to actually stick out, and his hair was ridiculous. Really cool, but ridiculous. Nishinoya Yuu wasn’t exactly hard to miss, and definitely was hard to forget. Sometimes Asahi wished he had, what with the somewhat constant presence. And the talking- couldn’t forget about the talking. Couldn’t.

“Oh, huh.”

“Yup. Got here like, two weeks ago.” Nishinoya paused and took a moment to count something off on his fingers. “Ten days ago, I think? Technically eleven, but I just spent that day sleeping off the travel and stuff. Doesn’t really count.”

Asahi cleared his throat self consciously. His mind was involuntarily being sent back to what had to have been the first day that he had been in the school. What kind of person did that on the first day of school? It was certainly a way to make an impression, that much was sure. It also explained what he had been doing in the old science wing. Nobody went down there these days unless they were either lost or using the broom closest for less than legitimate activities- or at least that was what he had heard.

Not only was he sadly lacking in the partner department, he was also lacking in the ‘partner’ department. There were rules about fraternization anyway. He was pretty sure they were bundled up in a rotten old corner somewhere along with the dress code. Half the partners around here were couples, for better or for worse.

“I heard you came from somewhere on the coast,” Daichi said around a mouth of mystery meat. Nodding, Nishinoya struggled to chew and swallow the same rubber-like ‘food’-- though that term was arguable when talking about school lunches-- before he responded.

“Yeah, I came from across the country. Bit of a walk, y’know?” At Asahi’s expression, he let out a bark of laughter. “Kidding, kidding. I got a ride from my one of my friend’s parents. It was pretty long, but hey, I still got my feet this way.”

He didn’t know whether to laugh or cringe. Nishinoya’s sense of humor often induced that state in him.

“What made you want to come here?” Asahi asked. He couldn’t help it if he was curious. The guy wasn’t kidding when he called it a long trip. Had to be more than a few days to get to the Academy from the coast, though it depended where it was he was coming from. The shortest trip would probably be around half a week.

He waited a second more for the normally talkative first year’s response before glancing up from his salad to shoot a questioning glance, first at him and then at Suga.

Nishinoya because he looked supremely uncomfortable, like he had just asked him about the nitty gritty of walking in on his parents or something. Sugawara because he normally was the one in their group who dealt with uncomfortable looking people. He personally just ended up either babbling at them or letting the awkward silence stretch.

He hadn’t said something bad, had he? It was a perfectly innocent question, damn it, and he couldn’t understand why Noya had just frozen up like this. The first year wasn’t even eating what was left of his pudding, just looking around and idly scratching the back of his head like he was trying to think of an answer. Asahi’s mind supplied one for him.

If he was reacting like this, coming to Death Academy probably hadn’t been his choice. What if they had kicked him out? Or his parents had made him come despite him not showing an aptitude as a weapon or a Meister? Getting expelled would be a pretty nasty reason to transfer schools. Had he gotten into a fight, or maybe were his grades as horrible as his sense of humor? Any of those would be enough to make him not want to answer the question. Only now did Asahi realize how personal the answer was and start berating himself for it. He could feel Daichi’s eyes on him, judging him for having asked about what was obviously a sensitive topic.

Thank God for Suga.

He broke the silence with a smile and launched into a spiel on etiquette for the compatibility exam. Asahi tuned out and started picking at the chlorophyll-deprived plants that they called the vegetarian menu at this school, suddenly having lost his appetite. Not even the carrots looked good right now, and they were the most edible thing there.

The pair across from him were used to his bouts of silence and didn’t say anything about it. They normally just meant that he was thinking. As they found out through trial and error, trying to talk to him when he was in the zone was about as productive as talking to his salad. At least his salad might let out the occasional sigh. No, when Asahi was caught up in his thoughts he was gone, out of the building, floating in a vacuum of reflection and-

“Say, Asahi- what are you gonna do on your off day?” Nishinoya’s chirp dragged him awake. He felt like he had just resurfaced, broken the water and come up for air.

“Huh?” He answered intelligently. “Sorry, I zoned out. What’s going on?”

Sugawara smiled softly. “He asked what you were going to do on exam day.”

He just couldn’t get away from this goddamn exam, could he? To be fair though, Nishinoya had every right to ask questions about it. After all, he was bound to find someone that he matched with soon enough, so he would want to get his exam right the first time.

“Have you taken this before?” He asked, trying to change the subject. He felt the stars angling towards him and he wanted nothing more than to glide unbothered through space.  
“Nah, they didn’t have this at my old school. There was a different way to match up Meisters and weapons.” He shrugged.

“Ah, well here it’s based on field trials and general exam scores.”

“As our friend Suga just finished explaining to him,” Daichi commented, breaking the end off of a chip. Where had he gotten the money for the vending machines? He was a Meister, not a bankroll. Those things were expensive. Plus, he was supposed to be keeping his body in tip top condition for the unofficial events of exam day. Year wide bracket faceoffs, unmonitored duels between students. Winning meant glory. Failure didn’t matter, as long as you competed. He’d seen the third years’ final round a few years ago, before he had joined the school.

Made him want to be a Meister.

He was too caught up in his thoughts to blush at his repetition of information. Nishinoya looked like he was the kind of guy who needed things two or three times- no offense meant, but Asahi had seen him walk into a wall and walk away completely unperturbed. It wasn’t natural.

“Yeah, but like-“ Noya made a wide arm gesture with his hands that Asahi was stumped as to the meaning of. It must have showed on his face, because the guy actually continued to express his thought verbally, which was a feat in and of itself when it came to him.

“Is it exciting? What’s the success rate? Will I find a partner the first time?”

Daichi and Sugawara exchanged a warm look that was pure something- adoration, trust, warmth- that made them look exactly like the married couple that he always joked that they were. Not around Daichi, of course. His wrath was to be feared. Asahi wouldn’t have been surprised if the pair of them were holding hands under the table.

“It’s definitely exciting,” Daichi said. “Best not to let yourself get too out of control if you want to perform at your highest, though. You’re a weapon, right?”

Nishinoya nodded quickly. Suga continued, “That means that most of your test is going to be about compatibility.”

Confused, Asahi furrowed his eyebrows. Nishinoya mirrored his expression, fork pausing halfway to his mouth and really who ate  _pudding_  with a fork and also how did he have that much pudding? He had a feeling that if he looked down he’d see that his tray was down one pudding cup. He didn’t’ really mind, considering the fact that his stomach was doing flips like it was considering trying out for the circus.

It was weird, he thought. Being around Nishinoya both served to make him calmer and more easily startled at the same time. The guy practically exuded confidence from his pores, so his nervousness could be attributed to that. At the same time, though, he gave off this aura of not caring what anybody else thought, and that kind of resolute stubbornness made Asahi feel grounded. And also kind of weird.

“It’s different for weapons and for Meisters,” Sugawara explained. Asahi rested his fork on the side of his plate and Nishinoya inclined his head to the side.

“Really? Why? Is it harder or easier for weapons? What’s it like?”

Daichi chuckled at Nishinoya’s rapidfire questions. “If you’d slow down we could actually answer them, you know.”

Asahi would have been mortified by that comment, but Nishinoya seemed completely unperturbed. He didn’t even apologize- just flashed that careless, somewhat uneven grin of his and expectantly watched them. There was something sharp in his eyes that Asahi hadn’t seen there before, but maybe it was just his eagerness. He could never read people right.

“Basically, Meisters have different criteria they’ve got to meet than weapons, right? Physical ability, strategy, technique, and all that jazz. Weapons’ve got a different role in the field. We’re there to support and protect, which means that the main thing we’ve got to have is a bond with our Meisters.” Sugawara blushed, eyes flicking to Daichi as he spoke. “So the most heavily weighted part of your exam’s going to be mental. You’ll be paired with a series of Meisters and your compatibility stats will be compared after the test.”

Nishinoya nodded vigorously. “How will I know if I’ve found a good partner, though?” He asked. Asahi wondered if he ought to be taking notes. There was no way that the kid would remember all of this stuff later, and he’d be bothering Asahi to remember it for him if the last week was any prediction.

Shrugging, Sugawara looked away. “You’ll just know.”

“Very helpful,” Asahi muttered under his breath. The words escaped the pair across from him’s hearing, but Nishinoya shot him a curious look. To his relief the short one didn’t press it.  
He stood abruptly. “Hey, I’m going to head back to my room and finish up on some notes I was taking earlier.”

Nishinoya perked up. “I’ll help!” It was less of an offer than a statement, so Asahi just sighed and picked up his mostly untouched lunch to toss it on his way out. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his new study buddy harassing Sugawara for his pudding. A huff of a laugh escaped between his lips. So weird.

“Wait up!” Nishinoya barked, though if his size was any indicator it was more of a yip. He rushed up to the taller’s side, a careful hand cupped around his precious pudding to keep any from spilling.

“You know, you can’t live entirely off of deserts.”

“You know, I wouldn’t have to if they served edible food here, seriously.”

The two of them fell into conversation as they made their way back to Asahi’s room, which was conveniently located about as far from the lunch hall as possible. If It wasn’t such a sweet set up he’d ask for something closer to his classes, but he didn’t want to draw attention to what he was sure was an administrational screw up.

It being so far away meant that there were plenty of hallways to weave through and not enough short cuts to avoid the classrooms. After a few minutes, Nishinoya paused and darted to the corner of the hallway. Halting, Asahi raised a questioning eyebrow but followed him nonetheless. It was easier just to go with these things when it came to this guy.

The room he’d stopped at was a regular practice room, with mats already on the floor and various weights gathered on the far wall. Basic weapons like quarter staffs and swords hung on a rack next to the exercise equipment, for Meisters who couldn’t wrangle their partners into practicing with them. A pair of attack dummies, straw escaping from vital points on them, stood in a corner.  
Death Academy liked to brag about it being well equipped for any kind of Meister, and Asahi could see why.

“Nishinoya…?”

The guy had already pushed open the door and made his way inside, bright wonder lighting his eyes. His mouth opened into an ‘o’ as he regarded the scene before him. Asahi wrinkled his nose. Even though the practice rooms looked pretty neat, their smell was not something that he was anxious to revisit. Sweat, blood, and tears didn’t smell the best.

“Did you know about these rooms? This is  _so_  cool. Like, I mean, look!” He said, gesturing to the entire room in a broad sweep of his arm. For someone so short, he had a lot of trouble controlling his limbs. “This is  _so cool._ ”

He shrugged. Chances were that Nishinoya was going to be here a while, looking under ever surface and continuing his exhausting energetic shouting. “It’s just a practice room.”

“Yeah, but it’s a super cool practice room.”

Asahi shrugged again. He wanted to go back to his room.

“Hey, I’ve got an idea.” Looking up, the second year caught his underclassman’s eyes. They were flush with mischievous fervor. That expression never meant anything good, in his experience. That expression meant that he was about to convince Asahi to do something that would either get them kicked out of school or into the hospital. Neither was a good option, especially the day before the exam.

“No.”

“You don’t even know what it is,” Noya whined, sidling up to Asahi and giving him his best shot at puppy dog eyes.

Asahi raised an eyebrow.

“So I was thinking-“

“No.”

“-since this is a practice room and all-“

“No.”

“-we could use it to practice, y’know? Like you wield me or whatever-“

“N- wait, what?”

Nishinoya grinned, the smile stretching what seemed like an impossible distance across his face. “Ah, I knew you’d come through for me. Is that a yes?”

Sputtering, Asahi tried to come up with something coherent to say. It wasn’t like he was a bad meister, it was true. He’d said so himself. But it felt weird, like he suddenly wanted to too much and that wasn’t right. The only thing he’d felt for years was a sense of slick dread when people asked him to practice with them. There was no way he and Nishinoya were even close to compatible. It wouldn’t work at all. He’d pick him up and he’d be forced to transform back because there was absolutely no resonance.

He couldn’t. But he wanted to.

“Great!” Nishinoya exclaimed, taking his silence for an answer. Asahi really wished he didn’t do that. Before he could get another word in, however, there was a blinding flash. Oh dear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lied. Both about the chapter length and the number of chapters, but it happens, right? Yeah. Anyway, thanks again for reading and please bear with me for one or two more chapters! ^.^


	3. Me, You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exam day.

Whoever had decided that multiple choice was too easy was most definitely an asshole. Last year half the question had been friendly little bubbles for him to fill in. A looming page of blank lines greeted him now, much to his dismay.

He’d managed to get some studying in between all his worrying, at least. The theoretical questions were never hard. They were just meant for the Meister to warm up as far as he could tell, and start thinking about wielding since they wouldn’t get a chance to do that in the sparring rooms later. Wiping his sweating palms off on his uniform, he focused back in on the question.

There was still twenty minutes left when he finished the written portion of the test. He wasn’t confident in his essay, but then again, when was he ever? This part was barely counted in the final grade. Your field performance was what gave Meisters the distinction they needed to get assigned a permanent partner.

Maybe he should check his answers again.

Fifteen minutes left. Was his thesis statement okay?

Twelve. A rough doodle took form on the bottom of his page.

Eight.

Some people were cut out for the spotlight. Some people were born with wings that let them soar above others. They could twist and dive and rise into the sun’s glaring light without feeling its kiss as teeth sinking into their skin. He longed to feel the wind slipping like water over him, to be able to rise into his own right with only his own wings. That would never happen, though. He was Icarus, feeling the wax that held him together drip, scalding, onto his back. If he tried to fly, he would drown.

He’d rather just stay in his prison. Trying to free himself meant putting himself into an unpredictable sky, one that could go from blowing a gentle breeze to a hurricane in a matter of seconds.

There were moments when he thought that maybe there was an out, an escape. Sometimes, gazing out of his window, he could see himself as someone else. Asahi as he imagined him was confident, owning up to his stature in personality. He was unafraid and unapologetic. He was good at things, and had the ability to try things knowing that he might fail. He wasn’t afraid of that possibility, not at all. He embraced change and all the things that it brought with it.

At the end of the day, though, that was just a daydream. His alter ego would never be more than a figment of his imagination to be pulled up when he was too distracted to read. Facing the reality of it was more than he was ready to do, and yet he tried to constantly.

One of the things that he had never understood about those loud people- the ones that threw things across the classrooms and swore in front of teachers without blinking an eye- was how they were so unconscious of their faults. People with those giant, swollen egos that retained compliments like a sponge did water? They were aliens.

Every time he looked in the mirror he saw his faults, outlined, underlined, bolded, italicized. He felt them written on every square inch of flesh in glaring red pen. Not just for him, but for the whole world. He could feel it on his legs, _too long, too wide, too bulky._ His face, _wide forehead, cow eyes, flat face._ Himself _, too much_. Himself, _not enough._ The mirror was the only time he could see himself as others saw him, but he could never seem to get past himself.

That was what Daichi always said, at least. He just had to get past himself- whatever that meant. There was no avoiding him. Asahi was too large, too present, too _there_ to forget.

Maybe that was what he hoped to achieve through wielding. There had been moments, just fleeting glimpses over the years. There were times where he could feel himself clawing his way into the lifethat other people had free passes into. Stolen color in a monochrome world. It was when he could feel his heartbeat in his ears and down to his finger tips, when he moved with grace that belied his usual clumsiness. Sometimes he felt rather than saw.

He craved that feeling like a drug. It was a kind of high. Lightness would be a better word to describe it. Weightlessness. It felt like the shackles around his wrists dropped and suddenly he could move so much more easily, without the expectations of others and himself weighing him down. He’d never told anyone that, but he’d seen it in Daichi.

 The way he wielded, it was like watching a classic sculpture come to life. He could see Michelangelo in the way that he balanced Sugawara’s blades between his hands. A double bladed sword was a fairly conventional weapon; it was just like the lovechild of a staff and a sword. The forms they used were simple, textbook ones that you could learn in any Academy around the world. Despite that- or maybe because of it- fighting them was like fighting a brick wall. Their sparring was technically almost perfect. Daichi seemed never to have any openings in his defense, even if his offense wasn’t the strongest.

Essentially, they just wore a person down until they had an opportunity to strike. That was their thing, their style. It was what they worked on and developed together because they had found a rhythm they liked. Some people, like them, had a partnership like a drum beat: slow, steady, ever present. He had never found his own instrument, let alone something to play. Most of the time he felt more like someone slamming their entire arm down on a piano. He was nothing more than a bad sound effect.

His hands drummed idly on the desk. The person next to him shot him a cocktail of annoyance and stress. He stopped tapping his fingers. Sometimes he forgot that everyone else was probably going through their own mental freak outs, though he was sure that they were a little bit better managed than his, during the testing.

This was, after all, a test primarily for first years. Poor things looked half dead in their seats, hair ruffled from hands running through it and paper wrinkled at the edges where they had flung their test booklets open in almost blind panic when they heard it was timed.

He found himself looking for one particular first year in particular, almost without his volition. The guy was hard to miss, he thought. The black hair that stood so vertical they could use it for Geometry practice was like a broadcasting tower sending out a cry for attention. Not that he seemed to notice either. There was less than five minutes to go and he was still scribbling like his life depended on it. And Asahi had seen his handwriting- saying it was scribbling was not an exaggeration.

It was hard to believe that kid was a weapon. He was about as threatening, for all his bluster and bravo, as a particularly aggressive kitten. Standing at just over five foot two, the guy was hardly built for the physical training that came with being wielded. His arms had none of the hard muscle that was common to see in weapons, even first years. At best, he was wiry.  

Asahi had spent more time than he would have liked to admit looking at Nishinoya. When the sat across from each other at lunch, just far enough apart that he could watch the other speak while still being a part of conversation, he tried to figure him out.

It was infuriating. Nishinoya Yuu was infuriating in the best way, if that made any sort of sense. Asahi was sure that it didn’t, but he was also sure that it didn’t matter because if there was anything he’d ever said that rung true, it was that Nishinoya was the most confusing person on the face of the planet.

It went beyond his simple lack of connection with loud people. Everyone had a defining characteristic that he filed them under in his head. Sugawara was kind. Daichi was solid. Kiyoko was subtle. Asahi was, well, something. He wasn’t sure what he was, but that was normal. He had never known himself. He’d always prided himself in knowing other people, though. 

Nishinoya’s file name was just a blank space. Asahi’s head was a mix and match system of trait-to-face recognition, stories and memories sketched into a stickman representation of each person. It wasn’t perfect, but it got him by without going through the awkwardness of forgetting names. Everyone else had always been an answer to him. Noya was a question.

The closest that he’d gotten to figuring out Nishinoya was that he was a creature of contradictions. At once he was the sun bleeding through the clouds and a hurricane. He was the quiet rustle of leafs falling from trees in fall and the explosion of green that came with summer.

Nishinoya wasn’t a word, but he was definitely a feeling. It was a feeling that set him at ease and yet made his stomach rile against him every time they talked.

That tugging in his gut was something that both relieved him and stressed him out on a daily basis. It was the closest to a connection he’d felt since he was here, but that was impossible. Not since the other day had proven that train of thought wrong. Maybe it was just that the kid was new and thereby interesting. Maybe he was just a conundrum. Once Asahi solved him he’d be just like everyone else.

That thought made him disappointed, for some reason. Nishinoya wasn’t made to be like everyone else. He reveled in his differences and used them to build himself up. He lived in Technicolor.

Asahi spent too much time thinking. Normal people would have taken a nap, he realized belatedly. Psychoanalysis wasn’t a normal alternative as a pastime.

With a triumphant caw, Nishinoya threw down his pencil not five seconds before the alarm went off, signaling the end of the testing time. Several students buried their hands in their hair or made last minute attempts to fix their unfinished essays. It was impressive, he thought. The number of students who should have outright failed this section who got partners was surprisingly large.

A teacher appeared at the front of the room, seemingly out of nowhere. Takeda normally worked in the library, and Asahi always thought it was because he moved so silently. Nobody else could manage to slip in and out of places like the small teacher.

There were rumors going around about him constantly, that he had been partners with Ukai before they had come to teach, that they’d filled their quota of souls in less than a year. Some people said that he couldn’t do anything in the field, and that he’d had to teach as a last resort.

Takeda seemed like the kind of guy Asahi could get along with.

He cleared his throat and the nervous chatter that had begun with the end of the test dispersed into tense silence. The teacher folded his hands behind his back and began to speak.

“Theory is important. Knowing how you can best handle a weapon, or assist your Meister is vital to being a valuable part of a team. It’s the foundation that all qualified teams build on. I like to think of it like the skeleton that experience will flesh out. If you’ll bear with me a moment, the other instructors are setting up the sparring rooms for the next segment of the exam.” He shuffled over to the desk in the front of the room and shuffled a bundle of papers.

“There’s nothing in this world like a partner bond. It’s something that your family may not understand, and they probably never will. If your significant other in the future isn’t your partner, there’s almost a guarantee that jealousy will play a factor in your relationship. It’s the kind of closeness that cannot be masked or surpassed, and I think that even many of you don’t understand it yet.”

The room was quieter than it had been during the test. Every ear in the room strained to take in what the teacher was saying, committing it to heart and to memory.

“Having a partner is showing the most intimate part of yourself in every way. It’s opening your mind and your body to them without restriction or restraint in an act of wholehearted trust. There’s no way to know how it’s going to feel, of course, but it is life changing. It’s standing out in the snow naked and not feeling the cold. It’s knowing that you will make a difference because there is no way something that strong wouldn’t.

“So while theory is important,” he said, rubbing the side of his neck with his hands and shifting his weight between his feet. “Chemistry is everything. Finding that one person who you can truly connect with and form a bond is essential. A good Meister can wield any weapon and vice versa, but the great know that they should only wield one.”

He coughed and shuffled behind the desk. Just like that, the spell that had fallen over the room was broken. Takeda went back to being a mousy man with overly large glasses. Asahi knew he wasn’t the only one hanging on the teacher’s words, trying to impress them into his mind, mark it with a speech shaped stamp. He also knew he wasn’t the only one conflicted about them.

Sharing souls was how he had heard it described. The total lack of barriers between two people let them communicate without speaking in battle. He’d heard it was something special. And something that could ruin a person as quickly as it raised them up.

With a sigh, he wondered if he’d ever do more than hear about it.          

“Now, if any of you here have taken this test before, you’ll notice that things are going to be a little different this time around,” Takeda began, gesturing towards the sparring rooms across the hall. “We’ll be setting up a rapid partner system in which every Meister gets to try working with every weapon in the idea of fairness. If you believe that you’ve found your partner, come and inform the staff and we’ll take you out of the pool.”

A hesitant first year sitting in the back row raised their hand. Asahi watched every head in the room swivel to face them as Takeda gestured for them to speak.

“But what if we’re not sure if it’s a match of not?” The poor girl sounded terrified.

The teacher chuckled. “You’ll know, trust me. It’s different for everyone, but you’ll know.”

The girl leaned back into her seat and nodded, her face still the color of an overripe tomato. There were no more questions.

“Okay then! Can all the Weapons please line up on my right and Meisters on my left? Thank you very much, please move in an orderly fashion—please—“ Students sprung out of their seats and rushed down to form the lines that they figured might determine the rest of their lives. Overeager was an understatement. Asahi found himself drifting to the back of his own line, one of the few who hadn’t sprinted forwards. He exchanged looks with the person who had sat next to him, and now stood behind him.

“It looks like we’re going to be here a while,” they said, pursing their lips as they surveyed the line.        

Conversation. Right. With strangers. Well, not entirely strangers, Asahi thought. He’d seen this first year around before, though he hardly stuck out like Nishinoya did. His black hair was parted in the middle and swept to either side, and there was a look in his eyes that was approachable. Overall, he had always seemed like a very calm guy. Strong, though. He’d seen him sparring before, and the guy was pretty solid on the field.

“Yeah.” Asahi nodded. There was a pause, and he thought the conversation was going to end there. The two of them could easily just part ways now and wait in silence. It wouldn’t be awkward if they did.

“You seem a little old to be taking the compatibility test.”

  
Asahi snorted. “Are you a third year?”

“Second,” He corrected lightly. He wasn’t sure how to respond to the statement. It was true, after all. Most of the classroom was filled with first years at various levels of capability. Some of them wouldn’t get partners this time round, but would next year for sure. The only other second years in the testing had come, like Nishinoya, as transfer students.

“So you’ve taken this thing before?” The first year didn’t have that look of panic in his eyes that so many did. Instead was a kind of flat curiosity. He was asking to be polite, rather than for himself. It was a nice change.

“Once or twice. They said it’d be different this time, though. I have no idea what’s going to happen.”

The first year shrugged. “I wouldn’t worry about it. What happens happens, right?”

The line slowly trickled forwards as did their conversation. They introduced themselves- Asahi, stuttering, Ennoshita smiling- and talked about nothing. Frankly, in a normal situation the second year would have been bored to tears by it. He despised small talk in any form. It was a waste of energy and effort, and he gained nothing out of it except a better understanding of the weather.

For some reason this pattern of lazy conversation was comforting, though. Ennoshita had a very relaxed attitude about this whole ordeal, which he suspected was because he already had a partner in mind. Asahi was sure that he didn’t have to worry about the written portion either; the way he talked was enough indication of his intelligence. For a first year he was incredibly self assured. Asahi filed him under potential friends.

They chatted. The line moved. They talked some more. Asked each other about their families, about their lives before the academy. When they had something in common they elaborated on it, throwing in stories here and there, but never drawing the eye of anyone in particular. Their hand gestures, if made, were muted and were little more than demonstrations of an action.

The two of them stood in stark contrast to the pair across from them in the other line.

Nishinoya was talking- if that was the word for the shouted babble that came simultaneously out of both their mouths- with another first year student with a shaved head. Throwing his arms in the air, Noya made a sound effect like something from a bad movie and both of them started cracking up.

Ennoshita followed his line of vision and raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You know them?”

Cringing, Asahi nodded. “Well,” he amended. “One of them. The short one.”

“You and Nishinoya know each other?” Ennoshita asked. A look flashed across his face that Asahi wasn’t able to describe. Realization or recognition, maybe. It made Asahi suddenly self conscious, like he’d managed to say something wrong that he didn’t know about. Had he said something offensive? He ran through their dialogue in his head, but came up with nothing.

“I guess. He sits with us at lunch sometimes and he’s pretty cool.” And loud, he added silently. It’d help if he could go five minutes without directing attention towards himself, but as things were going now Asahi was sure that he hadn’t been the only one staring. Takeda looked on the pair with a bemused expression and the people next to them in line had given them several feet of berth more than others had been afforded.

“Huh,” Ennoshita paused, a far off look in his eyes. “He talks about you, you know.”

Asahi’s eyes widened, but he was quick to wipe the expression off of his face and replace it with one of placid politeness. It shouldn’t have surprised him, given the amount of time the pair spent together. It shouldn’t have, but it did.

“He talks about everyone. He talks a lot, if you haven’t noticed.”

This merited him a smile. The two of them shifted forwards as the line did, and he saw that there were only a couple of people ahead of them now.

“You should see him go on about you, though. I don’t know him that well, but I’m pretty sure there’s more than platonic feelings involved.” He shrugged. “It’s none of my business, though. The other guy’s Tanaka, who’s one of my friends. Nishinoya’s just a friend of a friend.” Ennoshita said it like it was nothing. He felt like agreeing with him, that it really was none of his business and he shouldn’t try to mess with whatever it was the two of them had.

It had definitely become friendship these last weeks. He’d be able to say with some confidence that the two of them were friends. It was just that their relationship had been a little different than the ones he had with his other friends, though he couldn’t pinpoint it. They spent a lot of time together outside of class-- maybe that was it.

Maybe it was the fact that Nishinoya’s smile made him feel more complete even though he knew that he wasn’t missing any part of himself. Or that knowing that he caused it was enough to make his day. Hearing him say his name was enough to make him rip his head from anything he was reading. It was an instant call to attention.

Maybe it was more than normal, but it certainly wasn’t romantic. They hadn’t crossed any of the familiar boundaries between friend and something more, so therefore it was platonic. Talking aside, he wasn’t sure that he wanted it to be, either. If they lost their newfound friendship because one of them tried to make a move, he’d be too mortified to try to rekindle it.

Honestly, relationships were just bundles of stress wrapped with a cute little bow. There was nothing neat about them, and they refused to compartmentalize. 

Therefore, stuff was _totally_ platonic between them.

Instead of saying all of this, he just shrugged and looked away. They had reached the front of the line.

“Asahi Azumane,” A teacher read and the Meister jerked to attention. This was it.

Sink or swim, he’d have to go through this whole thing. Was that why he felt like he was drowning all over again? Oh God, he was going to mess this up so badly. He couldn’t even visualize doing this decently. What would he even do? At least he had known what the test procedure was when he walked into the room earlier, but now walking out of it he didn’t have a clue.

He couldn’t bring himself to see who the first person he was partnered with was as he strode, back straight and jaw set, into the sparring room. He was going to wear his teeth down if he kept grinding them like this, but he couldn’t help it. This kind of anticipation was the kind you felt standing on the edge of a building. He could see the metaphorical people on the ground, see how far away it was and yet only one step away.

A voice in his head that he recognized as his own reminded him that there was there were two possible results of taking that step. One of them was miserable failure, but the other was success like he had never felt before. He could almost imagine the elation of flying instead of falling. Almost.

“Hey, you’re that Asahi guy!” Baldie walked up next to him. Tanaka, Ennoshita had said. Asahi created a file for him. _Loud._

“And you’re Tanaka.” Asahi greeted him offering his hand to shake. Tanaka’s grip was like iron, but he made up for it by giving him the most enthusiastic handshake he’d ever received. It was a wonder that this guy was a weapon and not a Meister- he had the build of someone used to wielding.

“First year and war hammer extraordinaire. I’ll bash any fuckers’ head in if they mess with me.” The look on his face gave Asahi the creeps. “Nah, but what kind of thing d’ya think they’ve got planned for us? I’m fuckin’ ready for this.” He cracked his knuckles and began to stretch as he said this. Asahi moved to his own corner and started his own warm-ups.

“I have no idea, honestly. People keep asking me, but they said they changed it.” It was the best he could do to give a neutral response that didn’t convey exactly how sure he was that they weren’t going to be compatible. There were some people where he just knew that wielding them would be like using a regular weapon. Sure, with enough power and technique behind it they could be decent, but never good. Never partners.

“I’ll bet we’re sparring against our classmates.” Tanaka offered, reaching down to stretch his quads.

“Don’t you think there’d be someone else in the room if we were going to do that?”

“Right. Maybe we scared ‘em off.” Asahi didn’t quite laugh, but let out a quick exhalation of air that Tanaka took as a victory.

“You don’t seem excited to be taking the test,” Tanaka commented offhandedly. The other stood up from where he had been stretching on the floor. He scratched his arm absently, once again unsure of how to respond.

“Is it that obvious?” He asked after a moment. “You’re like the third person to say that.”

“You just gotta chill and go with it, I figure. I mean, no offense, but I’m not feeling a partner vibe from you right now so I doubt we’re gonna be partnered after the exam.”

Asahi let out some of the tension from his shoulder. At least they’d be going into this expecting the same thing out of it. That was, in his case, absolutely nothing.

The instructor wandered into the room after a few more minutes of significantly less tense conversation. It was, of course, Ukai. He supervised the training of unpartnered Meisters and Weapons. His blond hair was held back by his customary headband, and he was wearing workout clothes.

There were no greetings or formalities. Ukai bowed to him and took a fighting stance, and both the students understood what was happening in a second. Asahi shot the other a look and Tanaka nodded in return. A glow started over his skin and in a sudden burst of energy an oversized hammer lay where the boy had stood.

A second of hesitation that Asahi could see Ukai registering and he padded over to the Weapon. The grip was too firm for his taste; there was no give in it for him to get a better hold. It would have to do. He hefted it up and held it ready close to his body, like he’d been taught.

Asahi bowed back.

It wasn’t a long fight.

Not five minutes later Asahi lay on his back on the practice mats, his breath coming hard and his chest heaving. The muscles in his arms began to tremble in the way he knew meant it would hurt tomorrow. For now he was fine, beyond being seriously out of breath.

Tanaka walked up to him, offering him a hand up. His recovery time was impressive considering the fact the fight had ended with him being flung halfway across the room. One good kick on Ukai’s part later and they were out for the count. The match had been bad enough that Ukai had been able to beat them Weaponless. That stung his dignity a little.

A quick scribble on his clipboard and Ukai was directing Tanaka out of the room and into the next. Asahi watched as he walked out and began to follow, only to be stopped by Ukai.

“The next weapon will be in in just a minute, soon as their fight finishes up.” He looked disinterested, bored even. Asahi was relieved- that meant that this was all becoming routine. No expectations if he was already ready for him to fail.

There was no clock in the training room. That was a rule that had been strictly enforced over the years he’d been here. No watches, no clocks, no anything to help determine the passing of time. There was no point, instructors said. You can’t check your watch in the middle of a battle to see how much time has gone by. It’s a matter of victory, not how long you can last.

On the other hand, it made waiting a process bordering on torturous.

Asahi’s thoughts always turned inwards, given too much time to himself. To occupy his mind, to stop himself from thinking, he tried to determine who his next partner would be. Tanaka had moved to the room to the right, meaning that if he’d been coming from the line it’d have been to his left—which of course meant absolutely nothing.

The only thing that made waiting worse was not knowing what was coming. That was the one thing he’d thought he wouldn’t have to deal with this time around. He knew what the process was, he knew what was going to happen. Ugh.

The door to his left pushed open.

And of fucking course.

Of fucking course it _had_ to be him, _had_ to be the one person in the entire _fucking_ school that he hadn’t even been able to pick up, let alone wield. It had to be that goddamn kid with his stupid hair and gorgeous smile and those eyes and—

Logic told him that he’d have to have fought with him eventually, given that he was going to do so with all the applicants. On the other hand, he hadn’t counted it to be so soon. Reason aside, it felt like the universe was drawing ‘ways to make Asahi’s day worse’ out of a hat. He felt pinpointed by some bad karma that he must have earned himself at some point.

 

* * *

 

 

It was like looking directly into the sun on an August day. The light that came from Nishinoya seemed disproportionate to his body, streaming out in a blinding flash that left spots swimming in Asahi’s vision. He threw an arm across his eyes and turned away.

When he turned back, Nishinoya was gone. In his place was a shield, toppled over until it lay almost flat on the floor. The thing was larger than him, and that was saying something.

“Nishinoya?” Asahi’s voice was cautious, confused. He should have expected that the kid wouldn’t turn into something normal, like a sword, he supposed. But a shield?

Shield-type weapons were most definitely _not_ in his textbooks. He’d never heard of one, much less seen one in the flesh.

Noya’s face flashed in the metallic surface of the shield, gone so quickly that if he hadn’t been looking for it he wouldn’t have known it was there. The orange and black tones of it are abrasive but manage to make the weapon’s eyes glow with a kind of feverish energy.

He was afraid to touch it, for some reason. Afraid to pick it up and see how it works. He had no idea how to wield a shield, a defensive instrument, for offense. He doesn’t _know_ and he’s a failure as a Meister for it, because he has one job and he doesn’t even know how to do it. The familiar feeling of panic begins to well, pushing at the walls of his ribs.

Blinking, he forced himself to swallow and regard the situation like he would if he were being tested. Analyze, deconstruct, formulate a plan of action: that’s what Ukai had taught. It was rectangular, rather large and bulky.  A pattern of birds in flight crossed the center, hemmed in by an intricate design of black leaves. The whole thing probably weighed a good sixty or seventy pounds, and was solid enough to take a good hit and be none the worse for the wear.

Gently- ridiculously so, considering this was something _made_ to take damage- he tipped up the edge of the shield and slipped his arm through the leather strap on the back. It was soft, pliable, and yet gave him enough control of it he was confident that he’d be able to move it well.

If he could, well, lift it. His original estimate of sixty pounds was a little off, he thought. This thing was closer to maybe a hundred, maybe a hundred twenty. Cursing, he lifted with both arms until it stood in a vaguely upright position, leaning on his shoulder.

Was this really the five foot tall first year from a minute ago?

Nishinoya’s voice came through. “You doing alright?” Asahi grunted in response. How was he supposed to fight with this thing, when it was all he could do to keep it standing? There was no way he could move around carrying it- he’d have to be some sort of lifting monster. He was strong, but there was a limit to how much his muscles could take.

“You’re…” Asahi muttered, unsure of how to not offend. “Heavy.”

“Yeah.”

If Asahi hadn’t been struggling under his load, he would have noticed the curtness of Nishinoya’s response, how the energy he’d seen in his eyes didn’t come across in his voice. As it was, it went unremarked on.

“How the hell am I supposed to fight with you?” He was being blunt. No point in going around it if he was going to get this done- plus he had a limited amount of time before the thing tipped over again.

“I’d recommend letting me stand on my own, for one thing,” Nishinoya said. Furrowing his eyebrows, Asahi cocked his head to the side. He wasn’t sure that the weapon could see it, but maybe his silence conveyed the same thing, because Noya continued. “Just let go—I won’t fall over, promise. I’ve got you covered.” 

Did he trust the first year? To an extent. That trust didn’t stop him from leaping out of the probable paths of destruction the instant he unhooked his arm and removed his hands from the shield. Somehow, miraculously, the thing stayed upright of its own accord. Gravity be damned, that was a nice break. Still, the fact that he hadn’t been able to handle that himself weighed down on him.

“There.” Nishinoya’s voice sounded strained. God, Asahi hated not being able to see his face. He hated the fact that he had no idea what was going through his mind; he was so used to being able to read Noya’s expressions that he felt blindsided without them. Was he frowning, his lips turned into twin arches, the corners of his mouth angling as sharply as falling kites? Was his nose crinkling like the corner of a book when you turned the page, or his cheeks flushed with exertion?

He made a note to appreciate the next time he could actually see his friend in the flesh. It made life so much easier. “What now?”

Asahi could imagine Nishinoya shrugging from the noncommittal noise that came from the shield. Fantastic.

“I’ve never really sparred much, so…I don’t really know what’s going to happen. Or like, what should happen.”

Sighing, Asahi re-strapped his arm into the brace and was surprised to find that the weight had changed drastically. Now it just felt like a steady pressure, rather than crushing force. He took a step to the left.

Rather, he tried to take a step to the left. With the movement, the full brunt of the weight came back to him and he found himself falling back onto the padded mats. The shield came down with him, only narrowly avoiding crushing his ribs as he rolled to the sides in a moment of instinct and muscle memory trained reaction.

The shield lay next to him, its resting belying its ridiculous weight and near injurious blow to Asahi. That had been too close for comfort. He couldn’t imagine the damage that having something that heavy fall on him would do, but he knew that he’d be in no shape for the test if it had. The tightening in his chest uncoiled into an exhalation of relief.

Okay, so that was terrifying. Not in the end-of-the-world-I’m-going-to-die-I-can’t-breathe kind of way, but in the oh-my-god-i-almost- _did-_ just-die kind of way.

“Holy shit,” he breathed, the mat under him feeling more like a cloud than a sweaty, worn down piece of rubber. “Ho-ly shit.”

“Um.”

The flash of light this time wasn’t quite so blinding, but maybe it was the fact that Asahi has his eyes squeezed shut, replaying those crucial few seconds over and over again. That was unreal. The way that his body had moved- it had been self preservation and it had been the closest call he’d had these two years. That was saying something, considering the mishap with the chainsaw.

When Asahi cracked open his eyes again, he was met with a pair of circular brown ones, just a shade or two lighter than his and staring intently at him. The second year scrambled into a sitting position, feeling his face flush with something that had nothing to do with exercise. Nishinoya rocked back onto his heels, sitting in a squat and studying the other with a curious expression.

His lips pursed and he looked on the verge of asking a question when Asahi interrupted, not even bothering to consider how rude it probably was. Normally he would have deferred to the other, but desperate times and all that.

“What was that.” It was a question, but barely. Normally so averse to eye contact, Asahi found himself unflinchingly staring down his sparring partner. His gaze was unwavering, the seriousness of it uncompromised. This was the calmest he’d felt in a long time, the most in control. A low wave of frustration and even anger simmer in his voice, carefully restrained into a deadpan.

It was met with silence. Tension quaked through Nishinoya’s body, drenched in sweat and shuddering with every intake of breath. Transforming was hard on weapons, at the beginning. He didn’t look tired; he looked shaken. There was something else too.

Nishinoya blinked. He breathed. He swallowed. Looked away.

Asahi stared. Held his breath. Waited.

He wasn’t sure where the warmth of companionship had gone, the heat between them that had been magnetic. There was that feeling between them that had been so familiar it was like he’d known it his entire life. It was waking up on the first day of summer and realizing that you could go back to sleep; of reaching out, grasping at the world and finding someone to take your hand.

And now it was cold.

There had been this certain haze of _newness_ that Asahi hadn’t even known he was enjoying. But the illusion was shattered, a mirror cracked into a thousand spiderwebbed fragments. His own reflection stared broken back at him, and he wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t that big of a deal. Couldn’t have been that big of a deal.

Judging by the way that Nishinoya couldn’t meet his eyes, maybe that wasn’t true. Or maybe it was; shouldn’ts and couldn’ts only meant something in a world that followed the rules, and Nishinoya Yuu did anything but.

“Noya.” The first year’s head jerked back to face him.

A few unsaid sentences, scratched out lines on the mental chalkboard, and Nishinoya spoke. “Sorry.” His voice was a breath of air.

“I’ve never seen that happen.”

Nishinoya chewed on his lip, and Asahi didn’t relent. He looked away and Asahi just narrowed his eyes. This would be so much easier if he’d just…let it go. Let it be past and let them both forget that it had happened. Asahi knew that, but he knew more that there was something under the reluctance that was important. He couldn’t put his finger on how it was, but the only things that people buried that deep in themselves were their foundations.

“Yeah.”

“Is that why you haven’t sparred much?”

“I guess.”

Asahi was already standing in no man’s land, so far out of his comfort zone that he couldn’t even see land, see anything beyond the roiling waves of new beneath his feet. What could pushing a little hurt? “We’re talking about the same thing, right?”

“Depends.”

The shorter of the two sat with his legs coiled under him, pressed down by the hands on his lap. They gripped each other in a chokehold, tearing the life out of them like it would distract from the dangerous direction of the conversation.

“The whole…almost crushing me thing. Where you gain a hundred pounds in like two seconds.”

Nishinoya smiled. It looked apologetic.

“I have a problem with that.”

Asahi hated this. This person who had taken Nishinoya and then just sucked the life out of him, the fight that made him the fiery kid he was. This was a burning ember, not a raging fire. Had Asahi smothered him? A dawning feeling of guilt started rising, just like it always did. A fire was lighting in himself, the sense of urgency that he was doing wrong and needed to stop before things got worse, like they always did.

He wasn’t a man of themes. Things in real life didn’t follow patterns like they did in books and movies. There were no symbols and motifs that represented his internal struggle, no meaning to the colors of his rooms or his choice of food. But if he had one thing that had becoming a recurring theme, it’d be that things always got worse. No matter what, something else could always go wrong.

It happened no matter what he did.

It also meant that there was no blame on him if things did, right? It was just the universe, sending a general ‘fuck you’ to him.

That’s what Nishinoya would say.

“Are you okay?”

Asahi’s words were stolen from him, Nishinoya’s a thief in midnight thought.

He looked down at his hands, the ones that had been holding so tightly onto Nishinoya a second before, the ones that had caught his fall and let him roll away. They were calloused and rough. He closed one into a lose fist on his uniform pants. “I’m fine.” His hands were a mockery of Nishinoya’s. Matched sets of crescent nail marks stood unseen where Noya’s nails dug into his palm. Fabric bunched under his fists and wrinkled towards him, giving in to his pull. “Honestly. I’m just confused.”

Any anger that he’d had in him had filtered out as he saw Nishinoya’s distress. Confidence was one thing, but there was always that overwhelming concern for other people that was a constant presence in his head. His ‘not right’ alarm was ringing its own concert right now, if he was any judge of it.

“I’m glad. That you’re alright. Sorry.”

“What was that whole thing, though? I’ve never- I’ve never heard of a shield type weapon.”

They’d switched roles. Asahi pressed, Nishinoya apologized. It was unnerving, like some balance they’d struck was broken.

“It’s kinda laughable. I’m a weapon that’s not actually a weapon. I can’t even attack.”

Asahi didn’t know what to say to that. His normal protests of ‘that’s not true’ died in his mouth. Anything he could say would come out sounding fake.

“But yeah, it’s always been like that. Dunno why. Makes it pretty hard to find someone I was compatible with. I’ve never had someone who could use me.” Noya turned his head away and stared blankly at the mirrored wall. “You’re one of the only ones who actually managed to pick me up at all.”

There was something about his voice that indicated more was coming. The reluctance was still there, a trembling note under his words. It was the same tightness that stretched through his entire body, and the same shadow that haunted his eyes. It was the stutter in his breath when he caught Asahi’s eyes in his reflection.

“I try to make myself lighter. I can for a little while.” Asahi nodded. “Doesn’t work for very long, though. I’m not strong enough to hold my own weight as a weapon, but neither is any Meister I’ve found. Puts me in a bit of a spot, you can imagine.” He chuckled darkly.

“I had just hoped that something would be different with you. I thought that there was something…” His eyes raked over the other. “…But I guess not. After this long I guess I’ve just started imagining things.” A quiet sigh and Nishinoya rose to his feet. His uniform was rumpled, but his expression was stony.

“Nishinoya…” A hundred questions raced through Asahi’s head, each one chasing the tail of the next.

The first year walked away.

 

* * *

 

 

Ukai nodded and scribbled something down on his clipboard, evidently noting who the weapon was. He cast a cursory glance at Asahi, but for the most part focused on Nishinoya.

“Name?” He asked, eyes focused on the paper in front of him rather than the person he was talking to. It was all perfunctory, but it helped Asahi calm himself at least a little. This was all part of an exam, and he had plenty of other weapons that he’d try later. As long as he didn’t get sent to the med wing from using this one.

“Nishinoya Yuu.”

“Year?”

“First.”

The questions rattled off, one after another. Finally, when Ukai seemed satisfied he tossed the board to a corner of the room. It landed with a clacking that belied the silence of the room. Asahi could hear himself breathing, and swore he could hear his heartbeat as well. It drummed a rapid, rabbit fast beat.

Nishinoya wouldn’t meet his eyes, not that Asahi was seeking it out either. If the instructor noticed, he didn’t make a comment about it. Maybe he did and he just didn’t care. It wasn’t that unusual for a weapon and a Meister not to speak to each other before sparring.

Daichi and Suga talked every time. They planned out what they were going to do, communicated through hand signals and nodding and shaking heads. They were always talking, though. They were partners.

Asahi and Nishinoya were evidently anything but. They were friends, maybe. They had been, before. He wasn’t sure what to make of their relationship now, if there even was one. He had barely seen the guy since that day in the training room, and as much as it relieved him not to have to deal with his conflicts, it was unnerving. Noya had always been the one to seek him out, and now that he wasn’t doing that he felt oddly alone.

Their game of hide and seek was over. Neither one of them was willing to look, and neither one of them was willing to be found.

More than anything, Asahi found himself regretting that he didn’t have the guts to ask him about what had happened that day. Maybe if he had been more outgoing, more impromptu, this whole ordeal wouldn’t have happened. They might still be talking to each other like nothing had gone wrong, like they had sparred like normal people and had a productive training session. Like they had the merest glimpse of compatibility buried under everything.

Maybe that could have happened in another world, one where Asahi flew instead of fell.

Ukai must have explained what was going to happen to Nishinoya, because before he knew it, there was that telltale flash that meant that the fight was about to start. With great effort Asahi managed to unfurrow his eyebrows and loosen his body. If his muscles were too tense going into this, he’d hurt himself.

One steadying breath later, Asahi walked over to the shield on the ground. Again, Ukai was silent. He didn’t attack, just waited in an open defensive stance.

It was up to him to begin.

Asahi threaded his arm through the brace and forced the weapon into a standing position, just like before. Adrenaline did nothing to make it lighter, and he grunted under the force he had to exert just to stand upright.

This time, Nishinoya didn’t apologize. Didn’t say anything at all.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Ukai said, the impatience in his voice betraying his actual meaning of ‘If you don’t hurry this up soon, I’m going to flunk both of you’.

Gulping, he thought through what he was going to have to do. Most of his strategy was going to have to be defensive, of course. If he could just get Ukai into attacking, he could probably use the wear-em-down tactic that worked so well for Daichi and Suga. On the other hand, he’d be slow and wouldn’t be able to maneuver to counter his attacks well.

He might actually be better off without the weapon at all. It’d be easier, for sure.

“Right.”

Mustering what he could, he lifted the shield off the ground and moved forwards as quickly as he could manage. Ukai lithely sidestepped and raised an eyebrow. Asahi turned and tried again, and Ukai did the same. This was never going to work, he knew. They could be here for a while if he kept this up.

Without warning, Ukai struck. Slipped around to behind him and planted a kick square between his kidneys and his upper back. Asahi stumbled forwards, barely managing to keep a hold on the shield. He couldn’t tune out.

Again, this time from the side. Asahi swung around and managed to change it from a hit in the back to the side, but he was still staggered and felt the promise of more force behind it. Ukai was going easy, giving warning shots to get him on his guard.

The next one wasn’t so kind.

He was lucky that his front was protected by the shield. At least most of his vital organs were safe from Ukai’s assault. He didn’t understand why the teacher didn’t just disarm him and get this over with.

“Use your space! Adapt!” Ukai shouted as he landed another square hit between Asahi’s shoulder blades.

It was hard enough trying to deflect any of his blows, let alone think ahead of it. That was part of a fight, though. He had to if he wanted to stand a chance. Ukai didn’t show any sign of letting up soon, if the barrage meant anything. He’d have bruises for weeks.

How was he supposed to do his later fights if he got completely beat up during this one? Nishinoya wasn’t doing anything to absorb the hits. He was doing nothing more than effectively being a deadweight, slowing him down. Asahi slumped against it, letting the thing bear most of his weight for him.

“Where’s your head? Where the fuck are you?” This time it wasn’t Ukai’s voice ringing through the room. It was Nishinoya’s, a hiss through his metal. Asahi glanced up to see if the teacher had heard it, but he showed no sign of relenting or responding.

His legs were swept out from under him, and he felt a moment of panic as he imagined the shield falling with him, crushing the air out of his lungs. Falling to his knees, he managed to keep Nishinoya standing and not killing him, as was preferred.

Asahi muttered an apology under his breath and regained his feet. He couldn’t drop the shield and fight hand to hand unless he was disarmed, and the way that he was strapped in that wasn’t happening unless the leather was broken or he fell.

“You can make yourself lighter for short spurts, right?” Asahi could feel a plan coming on, however sketchy and last minute it was.

Nishinoya flashed along the inside of the shield, the metallic surface lending his face shine. He nodded quickly and gritted his teeth. Whatever he was doing, it was costing him.

Just like before, Asahi felt the weight lift from his arm, freeing him and granting him enough mobility to dodge Ukai’s next roundhouse kick and swing the shield around for a counter attack. Ukai jumped back, on the defensive for the first time.

“Welcome to the fight,” the teacher muttered, retaking his stance and re-evaluating the fight. Asahi closed the distance between them, not wanting to give him the chance to think through his moves. Putting pressure on him was his priority, since he knew that there was no way he was going to defeat Ukai without resonance, let alone with something that was little more than an anchor.

The rhythm of sparring began to take over Asahi’s mind. Ukai’s patterns were getting predictable—of course on purpose—and he had to take advantage of that. It was a push forward here, a shuffle to the side, a thrust and a backstep. They parried and blocked but couldn’t attack, lacking an edge or an advantage or opening.

At least Nishinoya was taking the brunt of his own weight. The shield couldn’t weigh more than ten or fifteen pounds right now, no more than a heavy sword. Its solid base protected him from the other’s attack, but did little for offense.

It was a stalemate.

As long as he didn’t take any hits he could stay in the fight, but he also couldn’t end it. This was going on for longer and longer, with no end in sight.

For some reason, though, he wasn’t feeling the fatigue of the battle wearing him down yet. It must have been five minutes of darting attacks and dodges, but he could feel energy running through his blood and propping him up. It was exciting, almost. Maybe if he could press him harder…but this was an impossible fight to win.

Without him having noticed, he was being backed into the corner. Ukai pressed on him from every side and pushed him farther and farther back until his back pressed against the wall. The shield fit the corner perfectly, protecting him. He just couldn’t move.

“Well, the good news is that if this was an actual fight, we could just wait ‘em out here.” Nishinoya’s conspiring whisper felt like it was coming from right beside his ear. Despite himself Asahi felt himself chuckle. He didn’t have the extra air for that, his lungs burning.

Asahi took a deep breath and bent down onto one knee so that he was level with Nishinoya within the shield. “Are you okay?” Ukai was hammering against the shield, trying to find a way to break through the iron defense.

“Fine, now that we’re not running around.” It was then that Asahi noticed the lines drawn on his face. Sweat dripped down his face and he looked pale beyond the sheen of the shield.

“Does it take that much out of you?”

“I’ve never done it for this long before. I can keep going for a little while, but,” he winced. “We gotta end this soon. I can’t keep it up.”

“I’ve been trying.” Asahi shook his head and swallowed. “There’s no way for me to win this fight.”

Nishinoya’s voice was ice. “Does that mean we’re giving up?”  There was no warmth in it, and yet Asahi felt a flush of heat through the shield that had nothing to do with the room around them. It was the excitement, the energy, the anger, even, in his sparring partner.

Without realizing it, they had been working together. They had been giving and taking, lifting and pulling towards each other without a thought in the world to drive them apart. That was what battle did for people. It was what Asahi sought out each time in a fight, whether or not he found it.

But Nishinoya wasn’t the one out there fighting. All he had to do was manage not to weigh him down, and even then they couldn’t win. To say that they were both fighting would be unfair.

“Are _we?_ I wasn’t under the impression that you were the one getting the shit kicked out of you.” Half of him knew that the fight wasn’t the only reason his blood was pumping so quickly. There was the panic in him, that feeling that he wasn’t good enough ringing through him. It was starting now at the worst possible time, and the only way out was to throw the fight.

He scowled and looked away, focusing instead on the ringing of metal against Ukai’s assault. Well, maybe he was, but it didn’t hurt weapons the same way it hurt people to get kicked. Or punched. Or elbowed in painful places by a skilled fighter.

“Asahi,” Nishinoya breathed. “Get your head out of your ass. This fight is still going on, and we’re going to win.”

“Easy for you to say.”  He needed to get out of there. He needed to be able to breathe, and being pressed against the wall and _suffocated_ by the shield wasn’t doing anything for him. It was so hot, the air on fire and his lungs on fire and he was flying into the sun.

“You think this is fucking _easy?”_

He could see the toll it took on the first year, the way that his arms trembled and his eyes were eclipsed by the dark lines of his eyebrows drawing downwards. Asahi’s arms shook too, and his face was lined with concentration and hesitation in the same package. His legs trembled with that same need to bolt but the shield held him down. It didn’t ground him, just clipped his wings.

“All you have to do is not get in my way. How is that so hard for you?” Asahi’s words were biting, intended to hurt. They were stuck, literally, and from how he saw it, it was all the other’s fault. If he could just stop stopping him for one minute he could make an actual counter attack. “This would be easier without you.”

Nishinoya took in a sharp breath.

“I know.”

It was just like before, the change that came over him. Asahi was too distracted to notice, his eyes darting from side to side and the sweat slicking down his face the same as before, even though he was no longer fighting.

“I get it; I’m not the easiest of partners to work with. We can’t just give up, though. The fight isn’t over until they’ve called it. We’ve got to do the best we--,” Nishinoya cut off and gave Asahi a concerned look. Maybe his face was giving away the fact that his throat felt so tight that even if he did puke, he was sure it wouldn’t even come up. He rubbed a hand down his face, like he could wipe off the wave of irrational fear that bubbled up.

“Asahi?”

“I can’t do this.”

“Do you need me to tell Ukai to call off the fight?” He’d automatically gone into a softer tone, like when they first met.

“You’ve got to stop seeing me like this. I have to wonder what you have to think of someone like me. God, this is,” he choked out. “Fucking pathetic. I’m sorry.” Thick waves of shame rolled over him, leaving him feeling dirty, guilty. He was disgusting. He couldn’t go through with one fucking fight without this happening to him. He ran his free hand through his hair, not even noticing when the sounds of Ukai’s attack halted.

“You’ve got to breathe, man.”

It was a repeat performance of the first time, he found. Nishinoya’s weight on his arm kept him held down, but something in him couldn’t bring himself to take it off.

“I’ve got your back. Take as long as you need and _we_ can go back into this. Together. I’ve got you.”

He couldn’t say how long it took for him to come back down to earth. It took a while for him to be able to feel the ground beneath his feet and feel like his heart was settling back into its place in his chest. It always did. It had probably only been a few minutes, but it felt like an eternity.

Through all of it, he found himself grateful for Nishinoya’s weight on his arm. Even more than that were the words that dove through the sea of doubt and sought to pull him back into air. When he was drowning, Nishinoya swam for him. When he finally broke the waves, Nishinoya helped him breathe.

“I can—Christ, I don’t know. I’ve never tried this before, but I’ve heard that a weapon can—I mean, it might just be a myth. I’ve never even wanted to do it before.”

Asahi blinked slowly, finding his voice somewhere amongst all the chaos in his mind. “What?”

“Just, I mean, fuck it. I’m gonna try it.”  

The first second was jarring. He was being pushed off a cliff, being thrown from the highest tower into the open air. The mats that he had just begun to feel again were jerked away and he was _falling._ This was what it was to plunge, he thought.

And then, just as suddenly as he had fallen, he felt himself caught. It was a safety net that wrapped around him like a blanket. The fear throbbing through him with every beat of his hyperfast heart was  being replaced with a sense of wellbeing, thick as syrup. A smell surrounded him; it reminded him of safety, of familiarity.

Like a cat curled up in front of a fire, he felt something that he instinctually knew was his soul doing something akin to purring. In the same way that he knew that his soul had settled down he knew that whatever this was was Nishinoya’s doing. It was all around him-- a feeling that was uniquely _him._

He had been falling through the darkness, and here was Nishinoya as his guiding light.

This was the feeling of having a sun to revolve around. He’d never felt so complete, so covered and taken care of than he felt in that moment. Nishinoya had always shone. He was someone who had his own galaxy, a universe reserved for his own light. Until then, Asahi had basked in the reflection from a hundred stars, but they were all dim in comparison with the supernova bathing him in daylight.         

“Let’s face him, then. No more running away.”  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SO SORRY. THIS TOOK SO LONG. I'M SO SORRY. AND THERE'S STILL GOING TO BE ONE MORE. IT WAS AN ACCIDENT I PROMISE.
> 
>  
> 
> also on a sidenote I'm really not practiced at writing action so I apologize if it seems a little bogged down. Tips, advice, or just screaming with me about asanoya in the comments is always appreciated <33333


	4. Woods Swords and Wooden Hearts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's gentle, like an ocean current tugging him out to sea. He knows he's drowning, but it doesn't help him resist tide.

What was this feeling? God, what a cliché thought. He couldn’t help but challenge whatever _this_ was. There was a feeling of contentment slinking through him, like a river of molasses. It was slow, the feeling, and yet it spread to every corner of his body faster than he could process it.

 Heat flooded his extremities. It wasn’t sauna-hot, but warm. It was lying in the sun on a spring day, absorbing the rays of brand new sunlight for the first time. It was cookies just out of the oven, steaming on their trays.

 What the literal _fuck._

 He shuddered and the feeling seeped down his spine, relaxing it when he wanted nothing more than to tense. He welcomed the feeling, but at the same time part of him rejected it as inherently wrong. He wasn’t in control, wasn’t in control of how he was feeling or how his body reacted—but then again when we he ever—and that lack of control was more than disconcerting.

 “N-noya?” His voice came out shaking, despite the mellow feeling deep in his gut. The calm made him want to panic. “What’s…what’re you doing? Is this you?”

 Nishinoya’s face flashed across the inside of the shield. Contrary to his earlier expression, he looked more exhausted than anything. The signs of stress were still clear in the way sweat curled his hair towards his face. That nervous smile was all that was holding him up.  

 “Yeah.”

 "What...is it?” All urgency dripped out o f his voice, replaced by a relaxed peace that had no place in battle. “How?”

 “I can explain later.” Nishinoya disappeared for a moment, slipping around to the other side of the shield and returning a few seconds later. His face darkened in the apparent effort of keeping himself upright, but the same hopeful expression remained. “If you stop rejecting it, it’ll help. Please.”

 Putting it like that, it felt like Asahi was shoving away more than just whatever feeling was. Not accepting the feeling was the same as rejecting Nishinoya. He wasn’t sure how he knew it, but he did. There was something incredibly personal about whatever he had just done—after all, if there wasn’t, weapons would do it all the time. He wasn’t the only Meister to have problems with nerves on the battlefield.

 To call his problem just nervousness was the understatement of the century, but Asahi couldn’t make himself care enough at the moment, not with the syrupy tranquility rolling through him in lazy lapping waves.

 There were a few moments of utter silence. It was the quietest Asahi had ever seen Nishinoya without them having to have fought. Considering how long they had known each other, he’d seen that far too much, he thought. It was a threshold moment, like so many.

 If he chose to move forwards and take the step, take the leap of faith and fall off of that with Nishinoya, he could. It would change them; he knew it in the same way that he was beginning to know everything about this fight: half-chanced gut feelings that he could tell were true without a bit of evidence to back them up.

 There was no way of predicting _how,_ exactly, his step forward would change his life. If he didn’t open the door, he could never know what the room inside looked like.

 He could just walk by, take his hand off the knob and pretend he never saw the door marked ‘Nishinoya Yuu’. After all, they had only known each other for a few weeks now. Surely it was nothing that couldn’t be undone with some well executed avoidance and insults if it came down to it.

 Those were really the only two options. _The only two paths that split in this yellow wood_. One was a tangled briar of confusion, mystery, questions that he would never answer and never ask. The other was clear cut but dark. The sun didn’t shine on the path of abandoned discourse.

 It was the first time that he had found himself alone on a monumental decision, he thought. Everyone made choices, whether about how they would act or speak or what school they would attend, how they would spend their lives. Very few had to make those choices alone. And barely ever did they have to make them on the spot without a chance to think them through. Nishinoya could only hold up for so long against Ukai before he broke through.

 Okay. _Okay._

 “Okay.”

 The room spanned before him.  

 There was no path that he wanted to go down that Nishinoya couldn’t follow. They weren’t like most of his friendships, where he trailed like a ghost, was gratefully for thrown scraps of familiarity off of their bountiful table. He and Nishinoya, they walked side by side. Together.   

 He couldn’t say why, but he knew that no matter what he did, their paths would cross and cross a hundred times no matter what he did. They would intersect again and again, weaving in and out of each other like threads, intertwined. There was something connecting them, and he could feel it now, the thread that drew them together.

 He wanted nothing more than to give in to that feeling of connectedness and let it guide him. As the warmth spread through him, engulfing him and making him new, he felt something grow taught inside himself. It was like all his cracks were being filled with whatever this was, this feeling that was purely Nishinoya. His dull edged sword was no more, but forged in fire that made it harder than before. At the same time, he sensed himself tempering the feeling, like water on steel.

 Unchecked, this heat could turn into a wildfire. For some reason, it didn’t, but he felt that insatiable restlessness inside of it—that was Nishinoya too.

 “I’m not sure how it works, really, but the simplest explanation of this is that I’m…projecting an emotion. A memory.”

 Asahi nodded once instead of speaking. His mind was elsewhere.

  A resounding clang signaled that the fight was back on, and this time the stakes were higher. It seemed that Ukai had found himself a Weapon.

 Nishinoya’s face lit with a feral grin.

 “Let’s kill ‘em.”

 “I hardly think that’s necessary,” Asahi chuckled as he rose to his feet.  “Maiming, however, isn’t totally out of the question.”

 “Let’s seriously maim, injure, or otherwise harm ‘em. Doesn’t have the same ring.”

 Their words belied the tense coiling he sensed underneath Nishinoya’s front. The exhaustion hadn’t gone away; miracles like that didn’t happen. It was down to Asahi to win this fight, even if they were fighting together.

 Nishinoya had been doing more than pulling his own weight. Now it was time for Asahi to make his first move. Better to anticipate than retaliate, as Ukai had always said.

 “Let’s go.”

 Hoisting the weapon up with both hands, he swung forwards in an attempt to catch the instructor off guard. He’d been halfway through an attack and the force of the shield’s movements threw him backwards. Ukai landed on the ground with a grunt, springing quickly back into a fighting position.

 Winding him was all well and good, but Asahi needed to figure out a way to do some real damage.

 With newfound strength and calm flowing through him he found himself moving more naturally than he ever had with the shield. For some reason he was able to anticipate where Ukai would strike—the twist of his foot when he landed meant that he’d go for the right flank next, he’d have to dodge. That coiled wrist was aiming for his head. Duck down and charge.

 Ukai wielded something that looked, if he were right in his interpretation of the weapon, like a halberd. It was long and pointed on the end, making it hard for Asahi to get up close. If he could just break Ukai’s defense, he’d be left up the stream without a paddle. Halberds weren’t good for close combat.

 The teacher was making it hard to make use of that fact, though. He moved like the Weapon were an extension of his body, and Asahi mirrored his moves in his own way. The way he dodged and ducked and weaved wasn’t by any thought, but by natural instinct.

There wasn’t any time to think in between the onslaught, just to accept the feeling that had somehow gone from gentle waves to a crashing tide as they fought.

Something was coming.

As he sidestepped a harsh jab from Ukai, he could feel it. As he slid down and tried to knock out the other’s feet, he could feel it. As he moved in from the right, only to be blocked by a sweeping slice of the halberd, he could feel the way that the channeled emotions inside of him were reaching for something more. 

His pulse loud in his ears, he slid to the side and braced himself on the shield. Asahi’s breaths came quickly, tugging in and out in short bursts that left a familiar winded feeling at the back of his throat. Lungs expanded and contracted faster than he thought was probably healthy for how ready he still was to fight. Battle fatigue wasn’t setting in, yet they had been going for on fifteen minutes.

The rhythm of the match showed them to be standing even. It was a clash and a crack and a slice through the air, syncopated beats that came more regularly than they would have in a real fight. They were getting comfortable, he realized. They were falling into a pattern, and the one who broke it had the advantage.

He charged forwards without warning, managing to knock the weapon to the side and actually make Ukai lose some ground for once. With a shock, he realized that this was the first time he’d managed to do that this entire fight. The whole time it was him being pressed back and cornered, resisting but not fighting against the pressure that Ukai was putting on him 

Now, as Ukai tucked the Weapon close to his body and rolled to the side to avoid Asahi’s crushing attack, he saw what this was. _Fermata_. A held note, kept under the control of the conductor. He thought he was about to capture their king, but he’d been in check this entire time.

But in realizing this, he could fight it. He could take the advantage, or at least lose the disadvantage that he’d unconsciously been at the entire match.

Steeling himself, he re-evaluated the fight. From a third-party, what were the options?

Ukai was obviously more skilled and more at ease with his Weapon, whoever it was. He was agile, quick, had range and a good striking distance.

Asahi had his size and energy on his side, along with an almost impenetrable defense. For once, he thought as he blocked a high attack simply by ducking his head below the shield, he was grateful for Nishinoya’s size.

“You know,” Asahi panted to the Weapon. “I’m starting to think that you’re gonna bruise from this.”

Nishinoya did the closest thing he could do to snorting in his somewhat compromised position of being hit every few seconds. “Because I’m _so_ delicate.”

He was anything but. Asahi knew it was meant to be a joke, but he couldn’t help but start to compare them, just like he always did. They were day and night, the two of them. They were so different that there was no way to reconcile them to each other—at least, there shouldn’t have been.

And yet, here they were, a dawn.

“Do you feel it?” The Weapon’s voice was soft. He could feel the essence inside of him probing, poking at his mind in the question. It was new, but not necessarily uncomfortable. He had the feeling that it was right, somehow.

Asahi didn’t answer the question. Of course he did. He felt whatever this was, whatever they were, so keenly that he was having trouble figuring out where he ended and Nishinoya began. Was that the feeling that the other was talking about? Maybe he was thinking about the adrenaline. He could feel that too, rushing through him like a shot of liquid lightening. It set his senses on fire.

He’d never been someone who liked new things. Asahi was a creature of habit if nothing else. He liked what he knew, liked who he knew and didn’t venture far from the bubble he had created for himself to live in. It was a glass house, he knew, but it was familiar. Sugawara and Daichi were rocks to ground him in a current of anxiety. Even this school, the hallways and sensations, were part of him as much as anything else.

That was why he was wary about new things. They were rarely better than whatever had come before. All they were was more complicated, and one new thing led to another. They cast away comfort like snakes shedding skin and presented themselves, naked, to the world.

Sometimes, though, there were exceptions. That’s what Takeda always said—they were exceptions to every rule. There were some new things that fit like puzzle pieces he had never known were missing. They never interfered with what he had, but changed and bolstered. It was like he had needed them his entire life, like he had always had them in a way. How had he lived without it?

He doubted Nishinoya knew how that felt, or that he felt that about him. And it wasn’t like he was going to say it, either. He never did.

It wasn’t that Asahi lied a lot, or really at all. He was a terrible liar. What he was, however, was an expert in avoidance. He could talk his way around a question and stutter his way through half-responses until the original question was forgotten. He didn’t lie; he just didn’t say things .There was a difference, he thought.

That probing was still pushing at the edge of his mind, as if begging for an answer. It was so like Nishinoya to not accept his hiding. The first year had this habit of dragging him out of his corners and into the center of the room. He wasn’t sure he liked attention from everyone else, but somehow when Noya gave him the same, it was strangely gratifying.

“I think so,” Asahi finally said, swinging around to dodge a left swipe from their instructor.

At this, Nishinoya frowned. “You’d know.” He grit his teeth, the resounding waves of impact ringing through his Weapon-body. “You’d know, for sure.”

The problem with fights was that you weren’t just in close quarters with your enemy—you were stuck with your allies as well. They were closer than he would like, and it was unavoidable. How could he get away from someone he depended on so much? He wanted nothing more than to avoid like he normally did.

“I don’t—“ Ukai’s weapon sliced a high arc, slicing him harshly across the bicep. It was a long cut, but probably not too deep. In a fight like this, though, it could determine who won. “Shit.”

“Asahi?” Nishinoya’s voice sounded less tinny than before. It was like he was standing right next to him, talking into his ear, rather than wherever he went when he transformed. It was unnerving.

Blocking the followup attack, Asahi shook his head. “I’m fine. This fight is almost over, though. We should call it.” An out had been presented to him. And as ashamed as he would be to admit it, he didn’t want to deal with whatever this was that he had going on with Nishinoya. Ending the fight would end this and they would, hopefully, never speak of it again. He could feel the walls of  his glass house shaking around him. "Please."He wasn't sure what he was asking for, release or captivity.  

“We have to keep at this! We’ve got to break through eventually.”  

“We’re not going to, though.” With a grunt, he held off a twisting stab and steadied himself.

He could imagine Nishinoya’s frown, though he didn’t dare to look at those glowing eyes, so alive, so disappointed.

 Being deprived of his hands was being deprived of his nervous habits. No running his hands through his hair, or cracking his knuckles, or even that thing he did with his fingers sometimes—just cold metal that only reminded him of the inevitable end of the fight.

“We have no offense. At all.”

Nishinoya tried to counter it. “You could ram him or something—fuck, you’re the Meister here, dude! Christ, you could just like, tackle him, or break his weapon. Or something, I don’t know. But you can’t just _give up_.”

“You’d be surprised.” There was a bitter taste in his mouth. It didn’t stop him from lowering the shield, unstrapping his arm, and stepping away. Ukai raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. His halberd stood upright at his side.

He was better at saying nothing than Asahi was. One day, the second year vowed, he’d get lessons in stone-face from Ukai.

Asahi blinked slowly and stepped over the Shield. It was practically a surrender in itself, moving away from a Weapon. “I surrender.” It was official.

His arm throbbed. He should get a bandage on that soon, or it might end up getting infected. It was unlikely, but he’d known Meisters taken out of commission for weeks because a cut went bad.

Cold, empty.

The feeling was gone.

Quiet, too quiet.

Nishinoya was gone.

Dull pain.

He was such a _coward._ Running from the fight, running from his _friend._ What was wrong with him?

"I’d like to withdraw from the testing, please. I apologize.”

A voice in the darkness.

Sunburst, pinpricks of light dancing on the empty night sky, radiance and grace and good.

“Asahi…”

               

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is an incredibly short chapter, pardon. I've got AP tests coming up, and frankly am not as committed as a writer as I probably should be so anyone who reads this I'm super grateful to keeping with it. <33 
> 
> Also, the next chapter's gonna be hella angsty. Just so that you like, know. Okay. I was considering putting them together into the same one, but I thought it'd been too long without an update so you get this little tidbit to warm you up for the dealing-with-shit chapter. <333


	5. Mess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rising action, climax, questions. Who? What? How? Most importantly, why?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :))))))))))

It was a miracle, he thought, how long a single hallway could span. Surely it was an optical illusion that the trip to his room seemed to take twice as long as it normally did. Maybe it was the weight bearing down on his shoulders, a heart crowded with guilt, shame, and some other things he didn’t care to identify.

Worst of all, the other feeling was gone. Whatever it was, it had disappeared as quickly as it had come. A part of him he hadn’t even been aware existed now ached with emptiness.

If he was being honest it wasn’t the only part of him that felt empty.

Asahi’s head was an echo chamber of the same few phrases rebounding, refracting, ricocheting off the walls. He had every right to do what he did. Every right. As a Meister he could always end a sparring match, just like a Weapon could if they didn’t feel comfortable.

The problem wasn’t in the fact that he hadn’t felt comfortable—it was the opposite. Whatever had happened back there was so right that it felt wrong. It was homecoming in a strange house, warmth in a snowstorm. If he recalled, that happened as you froze to death.

Nishinoya’s was a sweet way to die, though.

If he imagined the boy as a snowstorm, everything came into clearer perspective through the haze of windtorn snowflakes. He was fierce, uncontrolled, with teeth as sharp as a driving blizzard and claws to match. The one thing he wasn’t was cold, though. Never cold, not towards him. It could all be so much _easier_. If Nishinoya would just not care so much, they wouldn’t be having problems.

But that was as impossible as it was for the snow to make its trek backwards once more into the clouds. Snow didn’t fall up, Nishinoya never stopped caring.

Nature, both Nishinoya’s and the Earth’s, bit him in the ass every chance it got.

This was supposed to clear his head, this walk. If anything he could feel his thoughts getting cloudier as they crowded into the space that should by all rights be empty. He didn’t want to think so much, just get back to his room and not show his face around the school for the next week.

Maybe he would just quit and go to high school like a normal teenager. It wasn’t too late for him to transfer-- after all, Nishinoya had done it.

The door to his blessedly unoccupied room offered quiet respite from the noise. Once more he was grateful for being the only inhabitant of the dorm. As it was, the cramped quarters were barely enough for him. He didn’t know how some of the taller students managed to share their rooms, especially the more confrontational of them.

Worrying about other people’s problems was second nature to Asahi, allowing him an escape from his own looming conundrum. Even as he puzzled out how Bokuto managed to share a room with the other, equally tall boy, Kuroo, the shadow lurked in the recesses of his mind.

He didn’t want to _deal_ with this.

Asahi was tired, annoyed, and couldn’t bear to look himself in the eyes right now. He wouldn’t blame Nishinoya for never talking to him again after the stunt he’d pulled, the exit.

To be fair though, he imagined that that was the goal of him doing it in the first place. All it took to keep his social bubble unpopped was rejecting his friend and the only spark of connection he’d ever felt fighting.  No big deal. There would be other Weapons, other Meisters for Noya.

He’d probably find his partner today, Asahi thought with a jolt. It was more likely than not with so many people participating in this whole thing. He’d be paired with someone his age, someone who could match his energy and zeal, who deserved the light of the sun on their wings. Nishinoya didn’t just fly, he soared—and his partner would get to take to the skies with him.

Was it jealousy, that wrenching that made his heart play staccato? Probably. Asahi always wanted what he couldn’t have, what he couldn’t bring himself to admit that he wanted. The light that spun down through the single window cast its gaze in the middle of the room. Asahi sat in almost darkness, the kind that came when natural sunlight was the only source of light in a room. It wasn’t unpleasant.

Maybe he could drift off like this and forget things for a while. That’d be nice, he thought as he stretched out onto the bed. He didn’t have the energy to pull the covers over him, and it was hot anyway. As the sweat cooled on his skin he’d probably regret his decision, but for now he was exhaustion-hot and could still feel his pulse in his ears.

He  wouldn’t have been able to say how long he laid there on his side, eyes open and mind blank. Minutes, hours, years, it was all the same.

Time passed differently when he was alone, like a lost child searching for a parent long-gone. It danced lazily down the hourglass like dust refusing to settle. Eventually it fell, bending its knee to gravity and landing without a whisper on the floor.

He drifted, half asleep and half awake, mind drawing lazy circles that had no end.

At first he wasn’t sure if he had imagined the noise or not. Was it just in his head, those shuffling scuffles outside his door? He didn’t particularly care. After all, the dorms were a busy part of the school. Everyone was housed in the same area, so it only made sense that there would be people coming and going at all hours.

As the noise got louder, more insistent, he got the feeling that it wasn’t just anyone coming down the hallway. Couldn’t say why, but it was enough to set him on edge.

A knock. Hesitant, then insistently.

With a reluctant grunt, Asahi rolled himself out of bed and staggered towards the door. The mental haze hadn’t quite cleared, but he knew exactly who he didn’t want to be there. Of course, what he wanted very rarely seemed to matter.

Nishinoya stood halfway through another _knock_. Sheepishly, he lowered his hand to his side.

Asahi blinked slowly. He was a bit slow in registering things right after he woke up, but Nishinoya’s obstinacy was so well ingrained into his memory that acquiescence was second nature. He stepped aside to let the other in.

“What’re you doing?” Asahi asked as he rubbed his eye with his hand, trying to rid it of the last traces of sleep. The other hopped onto Asahi’s bed, not bothering to perch on the edge like Asahi felt the need to do when he was in someone else’s room. The first year sprawled out, his legs traveling down the bed, but not hanging off like Asahi’s sometimes did.

Even just his mannerisms were different, more outgoing. Asahi ran his hands through his hair.

“Getting comfortable,” Nishinoya said. “We’re talking.”

Asahi nodded, moving to the opposite bed. He felt wrong staying standing, but didn’t want to sit too close to Nishinoya.  The extra bed was the perfect excuse, and the perfect distance.

Alone was too far. Together was too close.

He’d have to settle for almost.

“What’s up?” He tried to keep his voice casual, and probably failed miserably. He just hoped that Nishinoya wouldn’t notice the tremor underlying his words. “Shouldn’t you still be testing?”

“I withdrew,” Nishinoya stated. Asahi was disturbed by the lack of distrust that should have been shining in his eyes. Instead, there was openness like he’d never seen. Nishinoya’s face was open, his arms uncrossed, the lines easy. He looked for the hurt, the anger under it. But Asahi wasn’t _that_ good at reading people—he just knew it _had_ to be there.  

Asahi’s face drew into the harsh lines of shock. “What? Why? You can’t just do something like that!” Strands of loose hair fell in front of his eyes, but he didn’t brush them away. He was leaning forwards, like somehow that helped.

“You did.”

“That’s…that’s different, Noya.”

The first year raised an eyebrow and propped himself up with one of the several pillows strewn around that end of the bed. Asahi suddenly couldn’t meet his eyes, searching once more towards the ground.

“Not really.” Nishinoya shrugged and for every second Asahi avoided looking at him, his gaze got more intense. He could feel it boring a hole through his side; those brown eyes turned to fire, and Asahi felt reduced to kindling.                

“Nishinoya, you’ve got to go back. You can probably still take what’s left. They’ll let you.” What he was saying was true. Takeda had a weak spot for people who apologized, and Ukai for someone who took initiative. That combined would be enough to let him search for his partner like he was supposed to. “They’ve got to.”

The first year didn’t even bother shrugging this time. He just kept staring. It didn’t look like he was considering what he was going to say, not as much as that. He’d already made a decision of some sort. When Nishinoya made up his mind, Asahi had learned, he was impossible to sway.

“You understand why you have to take the test, right? You were awake for the explanation—I saw you. So why aren’t you out there right now?” If Nishinoya took any note of the fact that Asahi had watched him, even for that minute, he made no gesture to reveal it.

“I don’t really think there’s a point, you know?”

 This gave Asahi pause. He’d thought a hundred, a thousand things about the testing during his multiple attempts, but never that. There had always been a clear cut goal. Partnership was the light at the end of his tunnel.

“Why not?” He asked, his words paced carefully. Nishinoya, for all his talking, rarely did so about himself. The reason the open expression unnerved him so much was because he didn’t think he’d ever seen it before. It wasn’t like Nishinoya was unfriendly—far from it—but he was private. Very, very private.  

“It’s just…I don’t know, it just feels fake. There’s no real reason that you’ve got to test for that shit.”

“That shit? Finding your partner is--” Asahi couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence.

“It’s what? Awe-inspiring, amazing, the culmination of years of training and hard work?” Nishinoya breathed the words without venom. Even so, the sentiment was there. Shaking his head, Asah opened his mouth to speak, but found no words.

He was cornered in his rabbit hole, and he wasn’t sure if Nishinoya was fox or friend. It was disconcerting, to say the least. Confused, he nodded. “Well, yeah. I guess.” He chuckled in an attempt to relieve the tension he could see in Nishinoya’s shoulders. “But I wouldn’t know, would I?”

“Would you?” Quiet blandness where he’d hoped to find something sweeter, like biting into candy to find it turned to bread. It sounded too much like indifference.  

Sighing, Asahi leaned against the wall. “Look, Nishinoya.” The first year’s eyebrows raised, the only indication that he was registering what the other said. “Is this about earlier? I mean, if I put you off of the test in general, I guarantee that that’s not what everyone’s gonna be like. I’m not really a prime example of how a testing candidate is supposed to act.”

Did he just roll his eyes? “No, I’m here about how lunch tasted yesterday.” Sarcasm dripped from his voice. “I guess you could say I’m here because of how you acted, yeah, but…it’s not—it’s not bad. In a way.”

 He was having trouble organizing his thoughts, Asahi saw.

Should he prompt him? Let him figure it out himself? Asahi was saved from the decision as Nishinoya continued speaking.

“How many times have you taken the partnership exam?”

Asahi thought back. He couldn’t figure out what Nishinoya was getting at, but the least he could do was give honest answers, right? “This is my fifth, I think.”

“This is my _seventh_.”

The feelings that had followed him out of the testing room were beginning to return. They came in echoes of their old self, in whispers rather than tinnitus. It already felt old guilt, like a wound stitched shut. Maybe it was just acceptance. It came faster every time.

Nishinoya’s guilt sounded the same way; his disappointment was a scab picked to the point of scarring.

“That’s—you’ve never mentioned that before.”

The smile that he got in return was gentle, more subtle than anything he thought he’d see in Nishinoya. If he hadn’t been looking for the change in expression he probably would have missed it completely. “Yeah, wonder why. Never really felt like it’d help anything. Don’t really like complaining too much, I guess.”

“How?” Asahi blurted. “I mean, I know you transferred and people do it differently at different Academies, but you’re a first year. How have you taken it seven times? That doesn’t make sense.”

He fidgeted with the bottom of his workout shirt, a white thing that had been worn into softness. There was a slight hole near the side seam on the bottom, and he worried at it now. Asahi had to remind himself that he would only make it bigger by messing with it. Still.

The first year let out of a heavy sigh, one that bore more weight than should come out of someone that young. It aged him, Asahi thought. Nothing turns the clock like grief. Time passed differently when he was alone, so it only made sense that Nishinoya could suspend the rules too. Anything Asahi could do, Nishinoya ought to be able to as well. That was how these things worked.

Pursing his lips, the first year finally broke his stare and looked away. Were they looking at the same thing? Asahi’s eyes followed the dust highlighted by the mid-afternoon streams of light. Did Nishinoya see the things that he did, even when they were looking at the same subject?

When Asahi watched the sun cast its light on the unknowing dance, Asahi saw himself. He saw how small he was in the big picture, how he danced around other people, again and again, never touching.  He saw parts working towards a whole, pointillism, and pointlessness. They produced nothing and yet to the individual dust mite the dance was everything.

Asahi wrenched his eyes away and found himself staring at Nishinoya with the same curiosity.

“Yeah. It’s because I transferred.” Nishinoya paused. “Fuck,” he muttered. “Before I keep going, you gotta know that this isn’t…it isn’t something that I do. Unload my shit onto other people. I don’t know why I’m doing this with you, but you have to know, okay?”

The thrill that went through Asahi at being told, however inadvertently, that he was special enough to make exceptions for, was probably entirely inappropriate considering the situation. He pressed down the spike of elation and made as if to speak.

“And please don’t interrupt.” Asahi shut his mouth, and the first year took the time to take a deep breath. He stabilized himself, and closed his eyes for a second.

Closed eyes would make talking to people a lot easier, Asahi realized. Not knowing what they looked like or the faces they were making might help. On the other hand, he remembered his dislike of not being able to observe Nishinoya’s expressions during the fight. That was different. Most people weren’t as whatever-Nishinoya-was.

“So, um…yeah.”

Open eyes, open mouth. Nishinoya began to talk, albeit hesitantly. “So I guess I should probably start with why I’m here? I mean, it’s all the same to me.” It was obvious that this was unrehearsed. Asahi wondered if he’d told other people this story before, or if he was the first.

“Growing up I didn’t have a lot of friends. I mean, I did, kinda. They were people I hung out around and talked to and shit, if that’s what you consider friends. There were only one or two people that I really liked. The rest of them were just sorta there, and it wasn’t like I didn’t like them, I just didn’t really love ‘em, you know? But my actual friends were like a second family to me. They were the ones that I talked to about everything, you know—we had inside jokes and shared experiences and all of that, and it was great.”

 Nishinoya paused to think and Asahi choked down questions.

The first year was undoubtedly popular with the guys around here, even if his luck with women was less than phenomenal. Asahi couldn’t imagine him being anything less than that, honestly. He made friends so quickly, managed to make everyone feel like they mattered to him in just a few minutes. “I really miss those guys.

“Most people find new friends when they get to high school, but not us. When we were going into middle school, we all decided that we were gonna stick together until we graduated high school.

“As you can imagine, things didn’t exactly work out like that. Once we had agreed that we were gonna go to the same school, it all came down to picking one that we could all manage to get into. Half of us were idiots, myself included. After like, three years, we _finally_ all settled on one school- Karasuno High, this place with super cool uniforms and pretty decent academics. I managed to get in on an athletic scholarship, which was pretty awesome.”

Now that he had started talking, he was impossible to stop. Words gushed out of him like a broken dam. They crashed over Asahi as he struggled to stay silent, to nod and try to figure out what exactly any of this had to do with transferring. At the same time, he was halfway split between curiosity and marveling at the sight in front of him.

Nishinoya’s face was lit like a lantern. Soft light sparked in his eyes and there was something nostalgic to the turn of his lips. It wasn’t a full on grin, but there was definitely happiness along with the softness that had taken over his face. He could do nothing but watch as that expression slowly slipped downwards, the upturn of the lips falling away into a hardset line.

The first year bit his lip, and Asahi had to force himself to look away.

“But the summer before we went in, like, last summer, I found out about this whole thing the hard way. We were ice skating.”

Asahi couldn’t help but wince. He’d heard stories before about Weapons, how they discovered their transformational abilities. It was never pretty. Floors got destroyed, stuff caught on fire. He’d heard one where a sword turned into such halfway through a ballet performance, their feet going from en pointe to a different kind of pointy.

Broke the ice, sunk to the bottom of the lake. One of my friends almost got hypothermia trying to drag me out. At that point, you could imagine that I wanted like, nothing to do with any of it. I had a _life,_ you know? I had a _plan_.” Nishinoya swallowed.” All I could think was that it wasn’t how things were supposed to be. Which was super lame, but whatever.”

Shifting uncomfortably, Asahi wondered what he was supposed to do with all this information. It was the most he’d ever heard about Nishinoya. Everything else was rumor and supposition. It was unnerving to think that for someone Asahi considered close to him, he knew nothing about him.

He wondered how much Nishinoya knew about him.

He wondered how much he wanted Nishinoya to know.

It was the first year’s turn to run his hands through his hair now, managing somehow not to displace the styled spikes. “So anyway, at that point it’s kinda game over for my social life, right? Nobody keeps up with their friends. We did that whole thing with letters for a while, but I always got the feeling that talking to me was like a chore for them.”

It was something most, if not all of them did at some point. When you came to Academy, you left your old life behind, and most people left it at that. They all had families—most of them, at least—back home. Most Weapon families were friends, meaning that at least some Weapons could bring their friends to the Academy with them. Not Nishinoya, apparently.

The chosen few rarely included Asahi, either. He didn’t know exactly what made him want to become a Meister. He hadn’t been bad at school, hadn’t been too badly off. He just wanted to be someone, to do something. Maybe that’s why he wasn’t cut out for wielding. He didn’t want it enough.

He wondered what enough was, because there were days when he could feel every cell in his body struggling not to want it too much, not to get his expectations too high. Why wasn’t that enough?

It was so easy to slip into thought in the pauses between bursts of speech. Nishinoya talked quickly and consistently, in relentless streams of words, normally. Now he spoke haltingly, with breaks for him to gather his thoughts.

“So my first school didn’t work out so well. Like, at all. I applied, they rejected. Said they didn’t have any experience in training shield type weapons, and wouldn’t be able to ‘afford me an effective education’.” The phrase sounded rehearsed. Asahi imagined him reading the rejection letter over and over again, eyes frantic until they settled on the finality of that phrase. Or maybe he had read it calmly, distantly. Maybe he’d been unable to process anything, and withdrew until that phrase was all that was left.

“That set the—uh, shit, what’s the word? Fuck.”

Asahi raised an eyebrow.

“It’s like, when you’ve done something before, and so you do it like that again after that?” He waved his hand in a hand gesture that was probably supposed to be reminiscent of whatever word he was trying to conjure.

“Tradition?” Asahi offered. Nishinoya pursed his lips and shook his head. After a second his face lit with recognition.

“Precedent!” Nishinoya exclaimed excitedly. His expression slowly turned demure again after a moment, and he smiled ruefully. “It set the precedent. Sorry, words are getting away from me. Again, I haven’t really done this before. You’re getting an exclusive look at me here, forgotten vocabulary and all.”

“It set the precedent…? You mean it happened more than once?”

“Five times.”

Asahi could only sit and stare. What could he say to make what was clearly a sensitive issue suck less? He could try to be funny, he supposed. That wouldn’t end well. It was all he could do to nod sympathetically and not let his mouth hang open.

“Turns out there really aren’t a lot of Shields out there. Or like, any. At all. I’m the only one that I’ve ever seen, and same goes for my teachers. Schools don’t like dealing with stuff they know shit about. Makes ‘em look bad when I can’t find a partner.

“So I’ve sort of been bounced from school to school over the last year, and honestly, I like it more that way. I mean, don’t get me wrong, transferring sucks major ass. But at every school there are at least one or two guys who can pick me up and attempt something. I’ve learned to make myself lighter for short bursts, but there’s really nothing to do about how heavy my weapon form is. So far the record time for a fight Wielding me was something like three minutes, and that guy was _built._ ”

“Oh.”

Nishinoya didn’t look uncomfortable. If anything, he looked lighter than he had coming in. There was still that air around him of uncharacteristic seriousness, but it was alleviated. Asahi could feel himself tightening up in sympathy. His own failures seemed a dull throb to what must have been such a slicing wound as Noya’s.

“I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like.”

 The corners of the first year’s mouth dropped. His face took on a strained look. It was obvious to Asahi, who was so used to observing, that he wasn’t even trying to conceal it. Not looking away, not schooling his expression into something tamed, nothing.

How was this kid so trusting? How was he so confident that Asahi would accept what he was offering with nothing but empathy? It was unreasonable to expect from anyone. It was jumping from a skyscraper and expecting to land safely.

Falling was easy; it was catching that was hard. Were his arms strong enough? Maybe not, but he knew that he’d never let him hit the ground either way.

 “Noya,” Asahi found himself saying his name almost reverently, a whisper. The sound traveled across the dust and back. His hands were shaking.

The other said nothing. He just tilted his head to the side and nodded. It was just an incline of the head, really-- an acknowledgement of Asahi’s word, that he heard him.

“Sorry for interrupting—I know that you said not to, but I just—I need to know why you’re telling me all of this. I can’t,” he looked away, unsure of how to finish his sentence. He didn’t know if he wanted to. “It’s just that things seem to be happening, like, thoughts. Thinking. I’m thinking and I’m really confused and I’m just—“

“Dude, you’re confusing me, and I’m the one supposed to be freaking out over here. Take a second and decide what you’re gonna say if you have to. Not like I’m going anywhere.” Nishinoya said it almost lazily. He leaned his head back against the wall and looked at Asahi like he wasn’t a total freak.

People always thought that Asahi was a steady guy. They thought that because of his height, his build, he was solid like a tree. He had his immoveable moments, he guessed, but there was no one less constant than him. In reality, he was water splashing up against a cliff, flying to the wind. He was the droplets scattered and carried inland through the air. He was that aftertaste of salt left in the mouths of sunbathers, quiet and present but never _never_ a constant.

When he’d first met Nishinoya, he’d seen him as his opposite. If he was water, the first year was a wild fire, scrabbling towards a night sky. He was red and gold against the night sky, and Asahi was blue and white on a summer’s breeze. Maybe he was still fire; he had the heat, the passion, the consuming ambition to grow. There was something less variable about him than that, though. He was steady and dependable—far more than Asahi. Not a wildfire, no inferno, but instead a cozy fireplace burn.

Asahi was more than happy to be the oxygen to feed his flames, if he could just bask in the glow. It’d be nice, he thought, to be able to evaporate and be there without being observed. He’d love to watch without being watched, some day.

Now he felt Nishinoya’s eyes, relentless and steady and liquid and trained on him. “Yeah.”

Asahi took a breath. “So, basically, I understand what you’re saying. And I’m really sorry, because that sounds awful. Really, really, _really_ awful.”

“Really.” Nishinoya quirked an eyebrow.

Asahi blushed. He couldn’t help it. “Really. And I’m kind of an expert when it comes to stuff that’s really awful.” Angling himself forwards, he rested his arms on his knees where they dangled off the edge of the bed. “And while I sympathize and all that, I’m still kind of confused why you’re telling me all of this.”

“Yeah?” There was a whisper of a laugh in Nishinoya’s voice. Asahi smiled nervously and Nishinoya let out an amused huff. “Not surprised, honestly.”

 With that, he sprung up off the bed without warning and crossed the short distance that separated the two beds. Asahi shifted nervously, watching him with a mixture of curiosity and fear. This was where he walked out, because Asahi was too dense to understand whatever he’d been hinting at, and whatever mood, whatever honesty they’d had would be gone. He’d said the wrong thing. Again.

 “I always forget that you’re dense as hell.” Nishinoya let out an exasperated sigh.   

 He was standing directly in front of Asahi now, his small frame tilting precariously forwards like there was something pulling him towards the other. There was something flickering in his eyes—half a second of indecisiveness, and then a smirk. Nishinoya stepped forward so that there were only a few inches between them.

Asahi’s breath caught. He’d never noticed how the first year smelled before, like autumn and standing on top of a cliff just as the wind catches you, like danger and trailing through the forest as the sun went down. Self consciously, he swallowed. It was a nice smell.

 He resisted the urge to shudder at their proximity. The hairs on his arm rose to attention in anticipation more than anything else. Nishinoya, blinking, bit his lip.

And then whatever had been there, whatever electricity running between them, was dispelled. Nishinoya reached up and flicked him squarely in the center of his forehead.

“Ow! What the hell, Nishinoya?” Asahi burst out.            

 Snickering, the first year flopped down on the bed and slung his legs over Asahi’s. On second thought, he propped himself up on his elbows so he could still look at the other. His body heat seeped down and Asahi wondered again at his ease.

He was the kind of guy who tripped falling up the stairs at least once a week, always overanxious and jittery. There was always pent up energy spinning through his legs, you could tell. It was the eagerness to move that made him so clumsy, when his feet got in front of his brain and then suddenly his head went ahead of everything else.

Nishinoya spent a lot of time falling.

At the same time, restless energy aside, he was actually graceful in his own way. He messed up plenty of things, but that also meant that he’d tried them. After a while you could see him get the hang of what he was doing and fall half as much, a quarter, and then not at all. Watching him work out the kinks was a journey, but the destination was something more incorporated into his repertoire of ‘no hands’ kinds of tricks.

He tried and failed, but tried nonetheless. It was the opposite for Asahi. He did things only that he _knew_ would work, or at least had a decent chance. Nothing wrong with that, either. Honing and learning went hand in hand, after all.

Still, he couldn’t imagine them switching places for even a heartbeat. And that was saying something, considering the way that his heart was slamming against his chest. Just that little closeness had reduced him to a creature of quick breaths and sweaty palms. Maybe it would be for the best if everything stayed platonic. Still, he didn’t know if he could _stand_ to be this close to Nishinoya, physically and emotionally, if it was just friends.

But that was the way things were, and he preferred to hone what he had.

“I’d say I was sorry, but I’m really not. You’re priceless, man.” A swell of something rushed through his stomach.

“If you say so.”

 Asahi had no idea what to do with his hands. Should he lock his elbows and lean back on them and mimic Nishinoya’s movements? The legs across his lap stopped him from placing them where he normally would.

“Do you mind if I rest my hands here?” He asked, carefully placing them on the other’s legs. Even this risk felt monumental. Relief flooded through him at Nishinoya’s shrug.

 “Have you ever wanted to know something but you’re too afraid to ask?” Nishinoya said suddenly, breaking the spanning silence.

Asahi could only nod and swallow.

“Great, so I guess I’ll be on my way then, because there’s no way in hell I can set myself up for failure like this and actually have it work out. So, uh, bye.” He made to leave, but Asahi’s hand on his shoulder eased him down back onto the bed. “Sorry, kidding.” 

“Nishinoya.”

“Okay. Okay, so. Yeah.”

Quirking an eyebrow, Asahi looked at him with a confidence that belied his inner turmoil. If Nishinoya were nervous to say something, how bad could it be?

“So, like, you know how I said that there had only been one person who’d be able to wield me for a significant amount of time before? That was five minutes.” He paused and stared at a point past Asahi’s head, eyes focusing on a stain in the blank wall. “Our match with Ukai was going on twenty.”

 Words as solid as a blow to the stomach. The air in Asahi’s lungs suddenly flooded out, leaving him with only a breathed “Oh.”

“And I had this feeling—“

“That what? I could carry you for a long time, so what? If you haven’t noticed, I’m pretty tall. Can pick up heavy things. Plus, you know, adrenaline’s a huge factor in what people can do. I read this one story that was about this guy who lifted a giant boulder that was coming after him down a mountain because the adrenaline in his body gave him the strength he needed even though normally he was super weak and—“

“Asahi.” His tone was annoying reminiscent of his own, earlier.

 “Sorry,” Asahi muttered, aware that he had been rambling. Whatever it took, he wanted to delay what Nishinoya was inevitably about to mention. The feeling, that coursing, steady embrace that the two of them had shared on the field. He’d almost started to hope that the other had forgotten about that whole ordeal.

“I got this feeling that you weren’t uncomfortable with me. And I mean, considering the fact that I’m a giant fucking Shield, that says something. Like, your adaptability scores aren’t that high. Do you know what I’m getting at?”

Shaking his head in disbelief, Asahi found himself once again swallowing. A lump had formed in his throat that he couldn’t seem to get around. It was making talking hard. He swallowed again.   

“Are you saying that we’ve got _resonance_?”

“Kinda.”

To this, he gave no response. He couldn’t. The implications of that were too gross to consider, too grand a scale. There was no way, no fucking way that there was anything more than the spark he’d felt during the fight.

Asahi shrugged, forcing himself to appear nonchalant. “Lots of people have resonance.” Not with him. “It’s not really a big deal unless it’s _the_ big deal, you know? Definitive article, big bold neon signpost big deal.” Never for him. “Besides, it wasn’t like I could do anything with you, even if there was resonance at some level.”

He made careful sure not to acknowledge that it had been there, but not to deny it. This was a thin line he walked; avoidance without insult was a dance with fire, especially when the truth burned his tongue for every second he held it in.

Nishinoya’s legs were stiff with tension. Maybe his whole body was; Asahi couldn’t tell. The first year’s gaze pointedly shifted from the wall back to Asahi’s face like he was taking his time in the assessment. His eyes raked down the second year’s form like he was trying to take him apart and put him back together, to find the truth hidden under matryoshka-like layers of bluff.

Once more, Asahi wondered if he liked what he saw.

“You could think that, I guess. I mean, you’d be wrong, but you could think that.”

Asahi chuckled nervously. “And you’re an expert on this?”

“As a matter of fact,” The first year drawled. “No. Definitely not.” What would have been a quiet smile for anyone else curled across his lips. For Nishioya, who lived loud, it was just a whisper. Asahi bit the inside of his cheek and tried to arrange his thoughts.

The air around them was a gas chamber of possibility. One match and the whole room could ignite. Just one acknowledgement of what he was feeling could be enough to send them both hailing down in flames. There were few ideas worse than saying that there could be resonance, because that meant that there could also be something more.

Now that the real question-- the one that had haunted him for years-- stared him down, he didn’t want to know the answer. Knowing would change things, irreversibly so. How could they go back to easy banter and thoughtless conversation knowing that the two of them were something more than this, that there was a string of eternal commitment stretching between them? He wanted a partner, but only in the sense that he wanted to have one.

Partnership was possession. He’d seen it in Sugawara and Daichi, the way that they had given pieces of themselves to each other from the first. They had traded names, interests, hobbies, in conversation. Everyone gave that to other people; information was all that it was. Once they came together in the other sense, though, everything boiled down to giving.

It was odd that he thought of it like that, the act of sending rather than receiving. He’d never seen Sugawara _take_ anything unwillingly offered. It was accepting, rather than demanding. It wouldn’t be the same if he were partnered with Nishinoya, he was sure of it. Nishinoya was a driver, someone who would push him across his boundaries and never stop taking

There was no way that someone like him could be partners with Asahi. For that kind of relationship, he’d need someone just as vibrant, as ambitious and outgoing as him. If the two of them were partnered, it wouldn’t be fire and water; it would be fire and fuel.

Asahi would be consumed.

“Then how,” Asahi’s hands drummed absently on Nishinoya’s knees. “would you be able to say that there was anything more than regular resonance?” He shook his head. “Look, I appreciate what you’re trying to do for me, but—“

“I’m not. Trying to do anything for you, I mean. I like you, but we’ve only known each other for a few weeks.” His voice sounded strained, tight and thin. “And you’re so fucking hard to get this through to. We had resonance. More than resonance. Partnership-resonance.”

“I don’t understand where you’re pulling this shit from—“ Asahi’s voice rose in poorly suppressed panic. “but you have to stop. It’s not fair to do this. I thought—I thought you were better than that.” Realization dawned on him, and he stood suddenly, throwing Nishinoya’s legs off of his own. His rapid rising threw the dust into a frenzy.

Of course. Why hadn’t he seen it before?

“I get it. It’s so _funny_ to play a prank on the _pathetic_ second year without a partner. So fucking funny. Come into his life and pretend to be his friend and get close to him, convince him that the two of you could be friends, and then convince him that the two of you are partners.” His eyes went wide. Two and two had come together in a burst of light, the puzzle pieces slotting together in what he realized was probably the inevitable.

 “What a _fucking laugh_.” Asahi spat the words with venom.

 He ran a hand through his hair and pulled it back behind his ear so that none fell in front of his face. “Let me guess, and you wanted to tell the administration, for me to tell all my friends, so when it turned out we weren’t, I just seemed so _desperate_ for connection that I’d make it up? I’ll give you that Nishinoya, you’re smarter than I thought you were.”

Fighting the acidic prick of tears in the corners of his eyes, he swallowed and turned away. He could feel himself shaking. With rage, with fear, with an almost that turned out to be nothing more than a glimpse at what other people could hope for—he didn’t know why he was trembling, but it was something like that.

More than any of those was the burning tide of hurt that swept through him, though. It was nothing like the apprehension he’d felt only a few seconds ago. The certainty of betrayal was a roadblock in his throat; it was a tightness in his gut that lent itself to nausea.

“You need to leave. I can’t—“

Nishinoya made as if to speak. Asahi silenced him with a glare. “No. I don’t want to—fuck.”

Did he get some kind of kick out of this, Asahi wondered? Some sort of perverse pleasure in seeing Asahi choke down tears and writhe under pressure? Had he enjoyed watching Asahi fail and fail again during training as he struggled for some common ground, some way for them to succeed together?

“Asahi, you’re not being rational,” Nishinoya began.

“This isn’t a rational situation, so you can go fuck yourself.”

Were these words really coming out of his mouth? Him, who spent lunches quietly trying to pretend he understood what everyone was talking about because he didn’t want to interject? Him, who passed all his classes but took bad grades without protest? Him, who couldn’t dispel the rumors of his delinquency despite his best efforts?

He could be jumping to conclusions, right? But some gut feeling, something wrenching him apart, told him that it couldn’t be any other way. No one would want to be partners with him, would try to convince him that they were the right match for someone whose existence was as inconvenient as his was. No, there was no other reason that this could be happening.

“I thought I understood you. That I _got_ you more than I did anyone else. Isn’t that great for you, Nishinoya?” He dropped the nickname entirely. There was no Noya here, only a lying bastard sitting on his bed and trying to cover his ass. “And I thought it went both ways.”

When had he started crying?

Didn’t matter.

Humiliation burned him more than dancing around flames ever would. With that searing feeling clawing its way through him in licks of _effervescent_ hate, he wiped away the tears flowing more freely than they had in a long time and shook his head. “You need to leave. Please.”

Eyebrows furrowed into deep trenches, Asahi regarded the other as he slowly rose. He moved as if in pain, like his joints cried in the ways an old man’s might. Standing in the center of the room, Asahi got a good view of his betrayer.

Far from looking gleeful or even penitent, Nishinoya seemed…confused. His mouth was set into a hard line and his head perched to the side at an odd angle. Although his eyes were downcast, Asahi could swear that he saw something—no. No, he didn’t.

For once in his life, Asahi was in control. He was in charge, prevalent, the only force with the impetus to cause their words to turn into action. He held a world of possibilities in his hands, and with every breath of life he blew into it, he crafted it.

It would be a world without insecurity. One where he and everyone else stood on equal ground. One where he could look and not be looked down upon, where people didn’t stutter in their speech and everyone had the time to voice their own opinions before the conversation topic changed. One where people didn’t run out of the library before tests because they were too weak to handle the stress of imminent failure.

It would be a world without Nishinoya, too.

He wondered how much darker it would be, without his sun. The day might be colder, the nights darker. Realistically he knew that people couldn’t survive without the sun—nothing could—but maybe that would be different in his world as well. After all, he made the rules.

But he lived in a world of closed conversation and nonchalant criticism. One that spent so much time breaking others down that they didn’t have time to build themselves up. One where Nishinoya had pretended to be something he wasn’t, and became so much.

Nishinoya swallowed. Outrage was written clear on his face. Was he actually going to try to deny it? It wouldn’t do him any good, now that Asahi had figured out what was going on. He should just give up and move on to the next freak he wanted to befriend. Maybe all of this would work better on them.

He should have known, trusting someone as vibrant as Nishinoya. It had struck him as odd that the first year had been interested in him in the first place. People like Asahi didn’t have friends like Nishinoya—that was just the pecking order of high school. Neither popular nor isolated, Asahi drifted complacently in the middle of the social pyramid whilst people like Nishinoya sat at the top.

Wandering into the woods had led him to his own personal wolf.

When Asahi stopped talking, the room was quiet. Too much so. Anywhere where Nishinoya graced with his presence was loud, a shout in and of itself. He was a one man festival, Mardi Gras in a bottle. Asahi felt a shudder ripple down his spine. It was _wrong._

Nothing about this situation was right, though.

The silence stretched and stretched until it felt like an overinflated balloon.

Nishinoya’s voice was a needle. “We’re a pair of assholes. Holy shit.”

Asahi set his jaw. Why was he still here? Why was he not laughing, or getting mad, or doing something that validated his theory that Nishinoya was fucking around with him. Without his consent, Nishinoya continued.

“I mean, I’m an asshole because I’m vague as fuck, apparently. Like, I’m not sure how much I’ve failed as a human being to give off the impression that I’m an emotionless manipulative prick, but something must’ve gone wrong in the middle somewhere for that.”

He stood.

Crossed to the center of the room.

How was it that Nishinoya kept ending up in Asahi’s personal space? His bubble really wasn’t that large, not expansive enough to encompass that much of the room. Yet the first year had a abit of getting far too close, far too quickly for Asahi’s sense of safety. It was uncomfortable and abrasive.

“I knew you had... _things,”_ Nishinoya said, locking eyes with him squarely. His words were calm, meant to soothe, but his eyes—he’d always thought brown eyes were boring, and in a way he was right. They bored into him, with a driving wild intensity like he’d never seen before. “But I never thought that you thought I was like that. That anyone was like that. You’ve always managed to manage.”

He made as if to move, but seemed to stop himself at the last second. “Look at me.” Asahi reluctantly dragged his eyes back to the first years’. “Just…look.”

Looking was what he did. What he always did. When Nishinoya was bent over a page of notes, when he was quietly trying to balance a pencil on top of another during particularly slow classes, when he paid rapt attention to someone telling a story—when he told a story of his own and got so caught up in the words and actions he could see the other perform--, Asahi looked.

He saw him in those small moments. The quiet moments were what made a person themself, in Asahi’s opinion. How they were when they thought nobody was watching them was the most true to them that there could be.

That true Nishinoya—he’d caught it in glimpses and hastily averted gazes. He couldn’t claim to understand every facet of his being, but he knew enough. “You _know_ me, Asahi,” Nishinoya almost pleaded. “And we both know I’m a shitty liar.”

Narrowing his eyes with something akin to distrust, Asahi took a step back. His conviction was faltering, but this would be exactly what he would say if he were trying to keep up the façade. There was nothing, he knew, that could convince him otherwise now. It was in his thoughts, and it would poison their interactions forever.

Even if he had overreacted and he was wrong about this whole thing—an even that he didn’t think he should even really have to account for—they could never go back to what they had before. They couldn’t regain easiness and happiness just like that, with something like this tainting their past.

With something like him tainting them.

“Look at me and tell me I’m not here for you.” Again, Nishinoya’s stare caught Asahi’s breath in his throat. It wasn’t that it was unwavering that did it, though. It was the opposite. The way that his eyes, brown and glassy, looked at him like he was something valuable, something that could break if handled too harshly, was disquieting.  His gaze was expectant and nowhere near self assured. There was an apology and a plead in there, and Asahi didn’t know which one he was more of a sucker for.

Here he was, falling for the same thing again. “You think that that’s enough? I’m not- I’m not that bad, Nishinoya. I don’t know what you’re getting out of this, but it’s over.” He had to be strong. He had to resist the temptation to give in to those eyes and just fall.

Nishinoya may have looked at him like he was breakable, but his sudden grip on Asahi’s wrists was anything but. He held their hands in the space between them, that was too much and not enough at once.

In a silent moment, lightning flicked between them. The dust took on charge, dancing their dance in the quiet interlude between their breaths. It was a ballet of three acts in a moment, climax, conclusion, out of order dances that left the audience breathless. The prima leapt under the spotlight, twirled a hundred times in the space between one second and the next.

And then there was the applause. A cacophonous rush of sensation that flew through Asahi with unrestrained heat. It was like a floodgate between them had opened up. Mentally, he knew that whatever it was going through him, it wasn’t his.

 It was a chord of confusion, guilt, and hurt. They were things he had felt on his own before, a daily routine practically. Yet something about them marked them as sincerely not his—like a tag reading Nishinoya hanging off the ends. And then there was that last feeling, the one that sat like a violin on top of an orchestra: hope.

It was bright and glimmering and he instinctively knew that it was what Nishinoya was trying to communicate, just like he knew that this was somehow Nishinoya’s doing. It was like a bridge, a connection, had opened up between the two of them. He couldn’t understand what was going on, but he knew he was getting a look at Nishinoya’s very being.

His soul.

With a jolt, Asahi stepped back. Nishinoya, as if he had predicted this movement, stepped with him. The first year’s grip on his wrists never loosened. Asahi knew he could shake him off if he tried, but the prospect was one that didn’t appeal to him for some reason. He wanted to take advantage of this exclusive glimpse at the person he had hesitantly called his friend just hours before.

It wasn’t so much seeing as feeling, but Asahi got the impression of electricity. Electric blue, sparks flying off of the strands and tangents that made up what was Nishinoya. He knew, again, in that instinctual way he just _did,_ that each one of those was a chain of memories. Each was a desire, a wish, something that made him uniquely himself.

The vivacity of it overwhelmed him.       

With this newfound openness, he scoured the surface of the other’s soul. Encountering no resistance, he pushed further and further in a search for intention. He couldn’t find any dishonesty—none at all, which surprised him. Nishinoya was an honest guy, but that level of truth was more than unusual.

It also meant that Asahi had accused him of something he hadn’t done. Nishinoya was 100% innocent. He was stark, standing emotionally naked in front of him in an act that Asahi couldn’t pretend to understand, and Asahi had thought he was manipulating him.          

His crazy was starting to bleed into the spaces between his mind and his actions, into the undertones to his words and his outbursts. He was letting his own faults color his friendship with Nishinoya; of course his whatever it was was going to mess with his life. Of course. It wasn’t like him to have anything good and not lose it right away, anyway.

“Don’t.” Nishinoya’s words were quiet after the deafening roar that came with his soul.  

Asahi’s words came out dazed, like he was in a trance.”What?”

Functioning on two planes at the same time could do that to a guy. He was there, in that room, but somehow not at the same time. He was aware of his surroundings but just as acutely aware of how Nishinoya perceived their surroundings and the mixed impressions were enough to send his head swimming.

Still, he didn’t let go.

He thought he might never let go again. He could feel everything, feel how Nishinoya felt everything. It was too much to see  himself like that, to feel the space between them twice as much as if they were miles apart and inches away from possibility at the same time.

“Don’t think that about yourself. You’re not crazy.” Nishinoya’s tone held so much finality that Asahi was inclined to believe it, if only for a second. He just shook his head and felt a resurgence of affection in Nishinoya’s soul. That, and apprehension. Nerves. Anxiousness.

If he were more present, he might have questioned how Nishinoya knew what he was thinking, but in their current state it was unsurprising. The two of them mingled freely across the bond, like roads converging instead of splitting at their crossroad. They flowed into the same surging river, mixing andintertwining.

After a second, Asahi gathered together enough thoughts that he could claim to be his own to form a sentence.

“What is,” he searched for words. “This?”

What it was was addictive. He felt like he could spend days exploring the crevices of Nishinoya’s soul. It was cracked and folded and repaired as he could have imagined for his own. Some protrusions sung sharp pain, whereas others were rounded and blunt like they had been worn down by the sands of time.

Nishinoya’s smile sparked, flaring both physically and mentally. Asahi felt recognition across the bond, and a drawn out feeling of relief. “It’s not just resonance, right?” Nishinoya asked, his eyes glittering.

Mutely, Asahi shook his head.

“I’ve always been pretty good at reading people, you know? The way people talk says a lot about them, and I end up learning a lot about everyone without meaning to, sometimes.” Although Asahi was sure that he had never purposefully done that, he was hit with a barrage of memories of Nishinoya doing just that. “So I figure I’m a pretty empathic person.”

Nishinoya watched people, just in a different way. He learned and observed through active participation; Asahi was fascinated and annoyed with himself for being so.

“What does that have to do with…whatever you’re doing?”

Another flash of images. Nishinoya, huddled over a book late at night, when the library was empty and moonlight slithered through unfamiliar windows. Another one with him talking to a teacher as students filed out of the room, even one where he spoke with a chagrined Sugawara. “There’s this thing that weapons can do, sometimes. It doesn’t always work, and it works for some better than others. But it’s one of the reasons that the high level partnerships always end with the Weapon being as exhausted as the Meister.”            

He wanted to put his hands in his pockets, or cross them across his chest, Asahi could tell. His hands twitched around the second year’s wrists, maybe, or he could feel it across the bond.

“Weapons, especially empathic ones, can…” he searched for a word, eyebrows scrunching together in a way that Asahi would consider cute, if he weren’t wracked with the dripping guilt of accusing his friend of betrayal. And if he knew that his thoughts were his own. “Form a soul bond. That’s the term I’ve always called it.”

“A soul bond?”

Nishinoya nodded. “Yeah. It’s really hard to explain how it works, because apparently it’s different for everyone. It’s basically the opening of channels between two people, removing physical boundaries and interacting as manifestations of free energy- or souls- rather than as people. Suga and Daichi have something like it, but from what I can tell, theirs’ is pretty quiet.”

Loud was the exact word he would use to describe the flowing of energy between them, the bridge that leapt and danced in front of his—eyes?—and lit up the darkness. There was a buzzing undercurrent, but also something unidentifiable, something musical in his ears.

“And I suppose you can’t do this with just anyone,” Asahi breathed after a moment of thought. “and it’s not easy.”

“Check and check. I can’t even get a spark of this with anyone else, not even people I’ve had resonance with. I don’t even think it’s _possible_ between Weapons. Plus, it’s kind of exhausting to try, like…I’m bad with similes. Trying to push a brick wall, I guess?”

“Ah.”

There was an unspoken word in the air, drifting between them. It refused to settle into his mind, let alone onto his tongue.

“Partners?” He finally choked out, in a voice cracking too much for his liking.

 Nishinoya’s grin turned softer. His hands, Asahi noticed, were twitching again. He had a sudden image of Nishinoya reaching up, touching his face and hushing him. His cheeks flooded with color and he shook his head to clear the picture, all too well imagined and detailed for his liking. Or maybe the problem was that it was too much to his liking.

Either way, it wasn’t what he wanted to be thinking about with Nishinoya _right_ there, their breaths two steps from intermingling.

Another image rose, unbidden. Asahi squashed it with force, focusing instead on composing a complete sentence.

“I guess that—“ he started. “means that we’re partners?”

It was anticlimactic. In his mind, there would have been sparks when they fought together, an intense and instant meshing of their personalities into some higher state of being. He had imagined instant chemistry, something between them as solid and inseparable as the earth and the sky.

The lack of dramatic reveal didn’t stop his breath from catching, though. It didn’t stop his heart from hammering in the best way, or the butterflies flipping over and over themselves in his stomach. It didn’t stop Nishinoya from leaning forwards, resting his head on Asahi’s broad chest and smiling against it—wait, what?

Asahi blinked.

Nishinoya stood in front of him, unmoving as ever, head cocked to the side in an expression of nervous joy.

Asahi’s thoughts were out of control, he thought. He needed to get a handle on this stupid crush before it got out of hand, got in the way of—he swallowed around the lump in his throat—their partnership. He couldn’t do this in the middle of a fight, or during strategic discussions.

“This should be the best day of my life.” Asahi said aloud. He instantly regretted the words, seeing the way they made Nishinoya pull his lip between his teeth. His expression clouded over and he pulled away, as if to move his hands away from the first year’s and sever the bond. The guilt flowing through was something only he should have to deal with.

Somewhat to Asahi’s disappointment, Nishinoya let him. Bracing his hands on his hips, the small Weapon took a wide stance that would have looked ridiculous, had anyone else tried to pull it off.

The bond wasn’t broken, not entirely. Something had sidled into Asahi’s head, a constant white noise of Nishinoya. It wasn’t the pure, unadultered essence he had been facing just before, but it was nice. It was there.

“And why wouldn’t it be? I mean, all that happened was a miserable failure at an exam, an existential crisis,” he said, marking the events down on his fingers. “A long bout of self denial, and what else am I missing?”

 Weakly, Asahi volunteered, “and a vindictive witch trial of my best friend.”

“Exactly. Sounds like a fucking awesome day to me.”

It was hard to say who started giggling first. No matter, it was only a few seconds until both of them were grinning so wide that their faces hurt, Asahi feeling better than he had for weeks. Months. That was the effect Nishinoya had on him.

Wiping a tear from his eye, Nishinoya spoke. “We’re a pair of messes. I mean, individually and as friends. We are messes, and we’re a mess.”

Asahi liked that; there was a ‘we’ for him and Nishinoya. It was the first time that he had considered that there was a something between him and something else. Friendships yes, but those were ephemeral as spider’s silk. Naming gave something power.

“You know, I like messy. It’s more fun that way.” With that, Nishinoya flopped down on the bed.

Asahi wasn’t sure whether or not to join him, or sit on the opposite bed. In a rush of nerves, he ended up sitting cross legged on the end of his unused bed, with Nishinoya at the head.

“You don’t know what you’re signing up for,” Asahi said, quietly. “I appreciate the sentiment with us being messes, but I’m a whole other level.” He rolled his neck, slowly composing  his thoughts as his vertebra clicked satisfyingly.

“You are messy, scribbled lines of homework. You’re like someone spilling a bottle of water on their laptop.” At this Nishinoya snorted, but didn’t interrupt. “A mess, but redeemable, you know? I’m like someone dropping their laptop off of a cliff.”

“Laptops don’t even work here,” Nishinoya interjected. “Therefore, your argument is irrelevant.”

Asahi smiled. “You’re really not good at similes, you’re right.”

 “No—I mean, I am, but that’s not the point. I’m saying that rules are different here; there’s something in this school that changes all the rules. The laptop never works either way, so we find other ways to make do. Both of us.” Nishinoya leaned forwards, no longer casually speaking.

There was a glint in his eyes that Asahi admired. The first year wasn’t good at articulation, but the ideas were all there. The ideals.

Asahi remained unconvinced. After all, how could a few measly sentences compare with years of him telling himself that the opposite was true? Nishinoya hadn’t even seen the tip of the ice berg when it came to his crazy. There was layer upon layer of bullshit that dug through to talk to people, normally.

Thinking about it, though, Nishinoya had been privy to more of that iceberg than any other person he knew. More than all of them put together, actually. He eyed the first year surreptitiously, trying to gauge just what it was about him that made Asahi open up as much as he did—or made him as vulnerable as he was.

“Writing long hand is a pain in the ass,” Asahi finally said. He didn’t know why he said it, but it felt like he was rehearsing lines in a play that neither of them knew the conclusion to. Somehow he knew that this was the opening act—whatever happened now would set the stage for the whole thing.

Nishinoya considered that for a second, rocking back a little as he thought. The first year pursed his lips. “But you have opportunities that you don’t have when you’re typing. Like doing calligraphy on a computer is _totally_ different, and everyone has the same handwriting. Without the laptop you have like, a hundred new opportunities. So there.”

He seemed so proud of himself for that little retort that Asahi couldn’t help but feel the same swelling of affection in his chest that he always did. When had it become an always thing?

Had opening up the bond made him more aware of his emotions, or was it just the tone of their conversation? Everything was coming out into the open, and here he was trying to figure out if this was another thing that he could drag safely out of the shadows of his mind. There were some things that could be said in the middle of the night that couldn’t in the light of day.

The buzz from his bond felt like a prod against his back, urging on his curiosity and his strained nerves. Maybe it had been enough for today, enough exploration and confession. After all, he had found out that he had a _partner_. More than that, he had discovered that his partner was one of the most amazing people he had ever met. Kind, and generous, and athletic, and intelligent and creative and—

Undoubtedly the object of his misplaced affections.

He knew that the longer they spent together, the louder the urge would be to do something about the turning of his stomach, and the brief images of possible future that were flashing through his head more and more recently.

The silence between them stretched, but for once it wasn’t strained. There was no tension in the air, no disquiet that disrupted. Asahi realized that he felt entirely at ease, despite the raging debate crashing through his head.

Interestingly enough, Nishinoya didn’t say anything either. He just watched him with those intense brown eyes, the ones that built him up and tore him down in the same second. His eyebrows were furrowed as if in effort.

Asahi felt a tug at the bond, even though they weren’t touching. The absence of that prerequisite surprised him, to say the least. It went away after a second, though. He watched the frustration in Nishinoya’s face as he tried again.

There was no need to make conversation. Rather, Asahi decided to just let Nishinoya try to piece through his efforts. Leaning against the wall, he let his mind wander and his thoughts drift. They had said everything—almost everything, at least—and he was tired. Emotionally and physically.

It attested to his exhaustion that he didn’t notice the bond’s gradual loosening until there was a hole in the fabric of physical reality, an open gateway between them.

When he started considering the pros and cons of confession, he failed to notice the bond. When he saw Nishinoya’s finger trailing up his arm so delicately, he noticed nothing. When he imagined how soft his lips would be, he had no idea.

And then he did, in a way. He noticed something; in all of his imaginings, he was seeing his own face, but never Nishinoya’s. He felt his own skin under his fingers, rather than feeling the fingers trace over it. He wasn’t seeing through his eyes.

With this, his own snapped open to see a sly Nishinoya perched just inches away. Propped on his hands and knees, the first year’s proximity made Asahi start, hitting his head against the wall suddenly with all his usual grace. Swearing, he cradled the rising bump on the back of his head.

“What.”

It wasn’t a question, so much as a general call for explanation. He didn’t know where to start asking.

“Yes?” Nishinoya’s lips curled treacherously.

“You.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Asahi’s eyes narrowed. “You are abusing the bond.” It was all he could think of, the only justification that didn’t openly admit to how he had accepted them originally as his own thoughts. They weren’t too far off of them, in actuality.

 “Well, yeah. Rules are made to be broken, bonds made to be abused. Of course, I would never do something like that,” Nishinoya said, his voice oddly breathy. It ruined the casual tone he was so obviously aiming for. “but if something _happened_ to trickle across without me intending it to, how could I be blamed? After all, this whole thing is new to me.”

“Liar.” Asahi found his voice, hidden under a mountain of nerves. Even now he felt the impending anticipation of tension, the good kind for once, building. The corners of his lips twitched, and he felt rather than saw Nishinoya’s gaze jump down to them.

In his current position Nishinoya was incapable of shrugging, so he just made a noncommittal noise. “I figured that now was as good of a time as any for you to declare your undying affections towards me, but you weren’t going to do it without a little prompting.”

Did that fucker _wink?_

Nishinoya began to say something else, presumably something snarky and teasing, but he found his lips surprisingly and suddenly occupied.

The kiss was fast and messy and everything that a first kiss as meant to be. It wasn’t like Asahi had a lot of chances over his years to practice. Asahi’s lips were dry and neither of them knew what they were doing, but the drowning static that mingled between them over the bond was enough for them to push Asahi’s pulse to a crescendo.

They parted too quickly, Nishinoya chasing after Asahi’s lips for a second before he realized what he was doing. Breathing, looking at him, observing in an entirely new way.

“For five minutes,” Nishinoya breathed. “Please, just stop thinking.”

This time, Nishinoya was the one to close the gap.”

All Asahi could feel was Nishinoya. He could taste him on his breath, feel his hands running and exploring over him. His eyes were closed, but he could imagine the dust in front of them. Drifting, dancing, delighting, because it no longer danced alone. Partnered.

                               

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is it? I guess? It's the end of this child whom I have labored towards for way too long. Thank you guys so much for sticking through in the ridiculously long inter-chapter gaps. This was a huge project for me to undertake, because it was really only intended to be 6,000 words or so, and ended up being...30,000? That's insane for me to think about. 
> 
> Anyway, huge shoutout to summer for finally giving me enough time to finish this, and my writing beta and real life bestie, Jane. (tumblr yip-yip-yep) She prodded me plenty, and practically spoonfed me the ending. (I joke, but seriously, thank.) If you guys want to check out more of my shit or are just interested, my blog is the-rolling-libero on tumblr, so shoot me a message and we can chat or something idk?? I'm kind of rambling here because it's 4am and I'm just sO EXCITED TO BE POSTING THIS. 
> 
> Okay. 
> 
> Thank you a hundred times over, and please leave a comment if you've got time to tell me what you think!


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